Using a unique dataset of a commercial microfinance institution in Madagascar, this paper investigates how the provision of microfinance loans with (in)flexible repayment schedules affects loan delinquencies of agricultural borrowers. Flexible repayment schedules allow a redistribution of...

Against the rising global concern of how to achieve sustainable output expansion in food, we document the main outcomes of post-Soviet agricultural recovery and restructuring in the Kazakhstan grain region. Together with an expansion of cropland area and increasing capital input, real...

This article evaluates the recent evolution of farm structure in Kazakhstan’s grain region against the reform objectives of the 1990s and the family farm theory that underpinned the latter. In the study region, super-large agroholdings, large-scale enterprises and smaller individual farms...

While smallholder market participation is seen as a catalyst for poverty alleviation, farmers in rural areas face a number of challenges in doing so. One of the most important factors is considered transaction costs related to transportation. Our study quantifies the benefits associated with...

This study explores the link between proximity and price cointegration between two markets, where proximity is captured with variables for geographical, political and cultural distance. Linear and threshold cointegration is tested for a set of 756 rice market pairs in 6 West African countries,...

In a meta-analysis of spatial price transmission (PT) literature we aim to test for the presence of distance and border effects on price transmission. We use PT estimates for 1189 cereal market pairs extracted from 57 studies and seek to explain them by airline distance and existence of a...

The accession of ten countries to the EU in May 2004, and of Bulgaria and Romania in January 2007, eliminated barriers to trade between old and new, and among new member states. We analyse the effects of this accession on the integration of pork markets in the EU. Our results show that the speed...

The influence on technical efficiency of access to credit and public support policies is studied for two groups of specialized small farmers in Chile. Using 2004 data, translog stochastic frontier production functions for 109 livestock and 342 crop producers are estimated. Mean technical...