This paper proposes a new interpretation of the farm size-productivity relationship. Using two rounds of the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey, and drawing on earlier work on five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the paper shows that the relationship between farm size and productivity is neither...

Since the enactment of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, owners and operators of farms and ranches have opportunities to evaluate new estate planning strategies for the transfer of farm businesses to subsequent generations. However, with provisions of the Act to be...

Food safety problems such as the BSE and dioxin crises focused attention on traceability systems and the certification of such systems. This study analyzes the status and perspectives of traceability systems and certification schemes, and reviews their potential costs and benefits. Results...

The new EU Animal Health Strategy suggests ashift in emphasis away from control towards preventionand surveillance activities for the management of threatsto animal health. The optimal combination of theseactions will differ among diseases and depend on largelyunknown and uncertain costs and...

The economic literature on pest control exclusively assumes a non-negative marginal product of pesticides based on a monotonic non-decreasing function of damage abatement, which may bias pesticide productivity estimates. This paper proposes a specification that allows for a negative marginal...

The paper aims at modelling adoption and diffusion decisions of farmers towards genetically modified crops under a real option framework. Modern GM crops help farmers to resolve two main sources of uncertainty: output uncertainty and input uncertainty. Those crops represent a revolutionary form...