Recent academic discussion regarding crop insurance in developing and transition countries has focused on weather index insurance. But empirical analyses of such schemes based on farm level data cannot be found in the literature, though this insurance type shows clear advantages compared to...

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...

This paper analyses the impacts of climate change of food processing sectors worldwide. Specifically, we analyze the impacts that changes in agricultural productivity might have for seven food industry sectors, namely meat, vegetable oils and fats, dairy, sugar, processed rice, other food...

The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) has continued to be fiercely debated between North and South, particularly with respect to its provisions for the agricultural sector. Article 27.3(b) of the TRIPS Agreement requires WTO member countries to offer some...

Since the 1980s, the investments in infrastructure have been significantly reduced, jeopardizing Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and competitiveness of Brazilian agriculture. The Solow growth model with panel data is used to estimate TFP. An adaptation of the Zhang and Fan (2004) model for...

As the use of global and national computable general equilibrium (CGE) models has become more widespread, most policies still remain at the regional or sub-national level. This level of disparity requires an approach that bridges the gap between national results and sub-national policies. This...

Public resources are limited and have competing demands, hence prioritization will be critical. Policymakers want to know what public spending on agriculture sector will have the largest impact on the poor and how the resources should be allocated among the different sub-sectors. This brief...

China has embarked on a major program to modernise agricultural and agribusiness structures with far reaching implications for rural development, international competitiveness / trade and food safety. There are, however, few studies that examine in detail how the modernisation program has...

This paper analyses total factor productivity growth in agriculture and its subsectors in Latin America and the Caribbean between 1961 and 2007. To estimate productivity growth we use the Malmquist index, which is a non-parametric methodology that uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) methods....

Hungary became the member of European Union in 2004. The authors want to show that, though, many sectors of Hungarian agriculture have been operating at low level of technology and efficiency; there was a big expectation about the fast catching up with accession to European Union. This paper...