This paper investigates the effects of network based individual social capital on the access of rural households to services. In the context of development economics, an innovative data collection approach is used to determine network based social capital. The approach originates from the field...

Although the successes achieved by the adoption of new seed and fertilizer technology were impressive, especially in regions endowed with public sources of irrigation, it is often feared--on the basis of field observations and evaluation studies--that it has led to a widening of interfarm and...

A set of purchasing power parities was constructed for the inputs and the outputs of the agricultural sector in 10 European countries and the United States. This made it possible to deflate both spatially and in time the nominal agricultural accounts. Real values of inputs and outputs made it...

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...

This paper presents an ex ante analysis of the private and social profitability of the introduction of Bt cotton for a major cotton producing area of northern Mozambique. Cotton is especially relevant to rural poverty reduction because smallholders often have few alternative cash earning...

We analyze the correlation between farm productivity and market participation using comparable household data from Tanzania, Vietnam and Guatemala. Each farm’s input use and output levels provide a within-sample measure of relative productivity, which we relate to that household’s level of...

The emphasis of education as a driving force for the growth of agricultural productivity can be dated back to the early 1960s. However, most empirical work failed to take into account of the fact that production technology changes with time and consequently obscure the true contribution of...

In the context of increasing competition for water, knowledge of the marginal productivity of water is crucial in determining its optimal allocation between users. Using primary, plot level panel data, this paper estimates the marginal productivity of water from supple- mentary irrigation in...

This paper is largely based on a study of Uganda's experience in trying to develop a modern dairy industry in the 1960s and 1970s by importing dairy cattle. In many of the developing countries of Africa, and elsewhere in the world, the drive to import dairy cattle comes from the need to...