While a substantial amount of research has been devoted to showing what social capital does, research explaining social capital itself lags behind. The literature has a long tradition of examining the effect of social capital on local economic growth and development. In this paper we examine...

A key issue in political economy concerns the accountability that governance structures impose on public officials and how elections and representative democracy influences the allocation of public resources. In this paper we exploit a unique survey data set from nearly 2450 randomly selected...

This paper investigates the role of infrastructure capital in China’s regional economic development during 1990 to 2009 in a neoclassical economic growth model. Four types of infrastructure capital are discussed; electricity, road, rail, and land-line telephone. The results support a positive...

Global general equilibrium simulations of “regional” (within Sub-Saharan Africa –SSA-) and “multilateral” (Doha and preferential) trade integration are compared to assess policy reform priorities. Their coherence with the objective of agriculture-led industrialization is tested. New...

Financial intermediaries [FIs] in developing and emerging economies are poorly equipped to manage natural disasters. These events create losses for FIs, eroding capital reserves and compromising their ability to lend. Portfolio-level insurance against disasters can improve FI management of these...

Agriculture is one of the least stable Canadian industries with respect to product prices, the volume of production of many products, and the net incomes received by farmers. Each of these aspects of instability has negative impacts on the income and financial security of farmers as well as on...

A number of writers contend that rising per capita incomes will reduce birth rates and solve problems of high population growth in developing countries (see, for example, Clark and Simon). This contention is attractive because family planning programmes that may conflict with some religious and...

A dynamic model of capital structure for the noncoiporate farm is developed and analyzed. In this model. the probability of bankruptcy increases as the farmer's debt/asset ratio increases. Funds invested outside agriculture earn a risldess rate of return. The farmer/proprietor is also able to...

A new land valuation system was developed, consisting of two elements: the ecological valuation of land, based on the fact that the natural dactors (soil, climate, land relief, and hydrological factors) can be separately valued and the result expressed by a single value, and the economic...

This paper uses dynamic simulation analysis to consider the likely consequences of the 1988 Japanese Beef Market Access Agreement (BMAA) on the Japanese livestock industry and beef imports. Using a simultaneous equations, econometric model of Japanese livestock markets, a forecast baseline up to...