The design of rural development policies and government programmes in support of farm operations and farm households relies on precise estimates of off-farm labour supply elasticities. However, the wide variation in estimates dilutes their power to predict the magnitude of these targeted interventions. We perform a meta-analysis of estimates of off-farm labour supply elasticity to identify systematic

Governments and development agencies increasingly promote agro-clusters as a pathway to improving smallholder incomes and ensuring inclusive rural development through mitigating production and market risks. However, there is very limited empirical evidence to support this promise. We use a large farm household survey of about 4000 smallholder farmers in Ethiopia growing cereals like teff, maize, wheat

We test and quantify the (in)stability of farmer risk preferences, accounting for both the instability across elicitation methods and instability over time. We use repeated measurements (N = 1530) with Swiss fruit and grapevine producers over 3 years, using different risk preference elicitation methods (domain-specific self-assessment and incentivised lotteries). We find that farmers' risk preferences

To assess the performance of third-party sellers relative to Amazon, this study estimates the effect of different sales strategies on Amazon's reported best sellers rank (BSR) of ground coffee in the USA and Canada and red wine in the United Kingdom using a fixed-effects model. The products are either ‘sold and shipped by Amazon’ (Amazon), ‘sold by the third-party seller and fulfilled by Amazon’ (FBA)

Submissions to the journal have decreased since the Covid-related surge in 2020, but continue their strong international pattern. Our response times continue to meet or exceed our targets, with a few regrettable exceptions, for which our sincere apologies. The JAE's citation impact factor increased again in 2020 to 3.58, though the calculation now includes early view papers, so is not directly comparable

We combine farm accounting data with high-resolution meteorological data, and climate scenarios to estimate climate change impacts and adaptation potentials at the farm level. To do so, we adapt the seminal model of Moore and Lobell (2014) who applied panel data econometrics to data aggregated from the farm to the regional (subnational) level. We discuss and empirically investigate the advantages and

In spite of mounting evidence about the growth of medium-scale farms (MSFs) across Africa, there is limited empirical evidence on their impact on neighbouring small-scale farms (SSFs). We examine the relationships between MSFs and SSFs, with particular focus on the specific mechanisms driving potential spillover effects. First, we develop a theoretical model explaining two propagating mechanisms: learning

Increasingly, the health claims made by food products focus on the marketing of specific molecular enrichments. Research exploring consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for health claims assumes that individuals hold perfect information on the benefits of the enrichment, and that their valuations depend solely on whether or not they need to improve their health. While health interventions are aimed at

This article aims at investigating the impact of financial supports from agricultural policy on farm-size dynamics. Since not all farms may behave alike, a non-stationary mixed-Markov chain modelling (M-MCM) approach is applied to capture unobserved heterogeneity in the movements of farms across economic size (ES) classes. A multinomial logit specification is used for transition probabilities and the

Some previous researchers have argued that trading strategies based on calendar spread time series momentum (STSM) can deliver significant returns (Szymanowska et al. 2014; Boons and Prado 2019), which, if true, is at odds with the efficient market hypothesis. These arguments however, do not exclude the unrealisable futures contract roll yield and are also affected by other empirical and statistical

Bias related to the hypothetical setting remains controversial regarding the reliability and validity of value estimates from discrete choice experiments (DCEs). This has motivated a large body of literature to investigate approaches for mitigating hypothetical and strategic bias. Our study provides further evidence to inform this debate by testing whether a combination of ex-ante or ex-post mitigation

Farm input subsidies and integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) technologies are popular policy interventions in sub-Saharan Africa, often with the stated goals of increasing crop yields and incomes while reducing hunger and poverty. However, little is known about the combined adoption effects of input subsidies and ISFM technologies on farm productivity and household nutrition in developing countries

Horizontal (vertical) elasticities of price transmission in a competitive market can be positive or negative in sign depending on whether observed changes in market prices are triggered by shifts in the supply or demand for the commodity or by changes in trade (marketing) costs. These facts suggest estimates of horizontal (vertical) elasticities of price transmission obtained from empirical models

The impact of information as an extrinsic quality cue on consumers’ valuation of intrinsic food quality attributes can be captured by incorporating ‘information treatments’ in experimental auctions. We combine ‘exogenous’ information treatments (a video broadcast and a radio transcript) on the benefits of a locally produced improved rice processing technology with an ‘endogenous’ information treatment

Past studies have used standard regression techniques to explain variation in estimated measures of the strength and speed of price transmission. We propose an alternative method for benchmarking the magnitude and the speed of restoring market efficiency that combines cointegration analysis with frontier estimation methods. The use of frontier methods highlights that market efficiency is a relative

Rural households in developing countries often depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. However, many also pursue off-farm economic activities either to complement their farm income or because they lack access to agricultural land. Rural off-farm employment is often informal and temporary. Searching for jobs can be associated with high transaction costs, which may be a constraint on some households’

We explore the impact of climate change adaptation on the technical efficiency of Ethiopian farmers using panel data collected from 6820 farm plots. We employ Green's (2010) stochastic frontier approach and propensity score matching to address selection bias. Our results reveal that climate change adaptation improves the efficiency of maize, wheat and barley production. We also show that failure to

We estimate farmers’ preferences for outcome-based (or results-based) payment for ecosystem service scheme in Japan. To this end, we use a two-stage stated preference approach—the first stage models farmers’ decisions to adopt outcome-based contracts using a discrete choice experiment. The second stage estimates the areas of land which farmers who choose to participate will enrol in the scheme. Based

Auction theory suggests that bidders follow a dominant strategy that is to submit the highest bid equal to the bidder's true valuation in an ascending price auction with independent and private values. Bidders in real-world auctions may deviate from this strategy, resulting in either underbidding—submitting bids lower than the valuation—or overbidding—bidding an amount in excess of the real value.

We assess preferences of inhabitants of the island of Majorca (Spain) for the conservation of traditional, extensively reared Majorcan Black Pigs and the linked agroecosystem, using a choice experiment. Up to 35% of our respondents registered protest responses. We examine alternative methods of dealing with and accounting for these protests. We find that free allocated models report better information

Small agricultural cooperatives are increasingly using differentiated payments based on the quality of their members’ products. Such cooperatives make a trade-off between the return on investment in quality and members’ disengagement from the cooperative. Based on data from the five-year survey of small French agricultural cooperatives, we analyse the effect of incentive payments on small cooperatives’

Food safety as a credence food attribute potentially leaves room for adverse selection arising from information asymmetry between consumers and suppliers. To mitigate this market inefficiency, certification works effectively when a credible control system is in place. However, in a situation where control is weak and uncoordinated, introducing certification may encounter consumer-related behavioural

Maximum residue limit (MRL) is the primary policy instrument to regulate the application of pesticides in agri-food sectors. Partially due to the lack of scientific consensus on risk assessments, the prescriptions of MRLs vary substantially across markets and products. We provide the first empirical analysis of the political economy of MRLs at the market-product-chemical level, while accounting for

A rapidly growing literature examines the impacts of COVID-19 on consumer spending and business operations. However, little is yet known about its effects on the food industry. We contribute to this topic by quantifying the effects of COVID-19 on the Taiwanese food industry, including food manufacturing, wholesale, retail and service sectors. Using administrative data on the business transactions of

We investigate various performance indicators of ten leading journals in the field of Agricultural Economics and Policy over the period from 2000 to 2020. More specifically, we combine various data sources to derive a coherent record of indicators including acceptance rates, times between submission and first response and impact factors. We show that, for the discipline at large, the turn-around times

I reflect on the progress of policy analysis for sustainable rural development over my professional lifetime, and the implications for the future. In so doing, I emphasise the distinction between policy analysis and policy evaluation, and the importance of enabling and facilitating transformation to improve resilience in a time of climate crisis; both of which highlight the need for more inclusive

The European Union (EU) protects about 1500 regional specialty foods such as Feta cheese and Gouda Holland. However, this geographical indications (GIs) protection does not automatically extend to other jurisdictions. This article tests a theory of EU demands for GIs in EU–Australia trade negotiations, using newly coded data on EU GI names in Australian supermarkets. Focusing on cheese, it confirms

In recent decades, numerous studies have focused on technical efficiency in rice farming, finding considerable variation in mean technical efficiency (MTE) estimates. We conducted a meta-regression analysis (MRA), using a random-effects meta-regression model, to understand the variation in MTE estimates due to study heterogeneity, heteroscedasticity and publication bias. We used 443 observations extracted

Currently, there is an ongoing debate about whether ‘in-vitro meat’ (IVM) should be labelled and communicated differently from conventional meat. Naming and labelling IVM can have significant implications and consequences for consumers’ acceptance of this new product as well as for future labelling policies. We provide, for the first time, information on how the use of different terms (i.e., ‘cultured’

The yield-increasing effects of agricultural cooperative membership have been widely examined in the literature. However, so far, little is known about whether cooperative membership has the potential to reduce farmers’ exposure to production risk. We address this gap by estimating the impacts of cooperative membership on expected yield, yield variance (variability), and yield skewness (exposure to

We investigate the cost and benefit of one of the most stringent Chinese environmental regulations that led to a shutdown of a large number of livestock farms. The temporal and spatial variation in programme implementation allows us to employ a staggered difference-in-difference (DID) to identify the causal effects of the regulation. Our DID estimates show that while the regulation significantly reduced

This study provides empirical evidence for the relation between perishability in vertically coordinated supply chains and the market power exercised over smallholders in Nepal. Using survey data from small-scale farms of tomatoes, ginger, high-yielding variety paddy seeds, and lentils, we demonstrate how varying levels of perishability affect the degree of market power exercised by contractors and

This paper explores the impact of the soft drinks sugar tax introduced in the UK in 2018 on the purchasing behaviours of different geo-demographic consumer segments. We analyse data for a composite good comprising the most popular sugar-sweetened drinks (SSDs) using loyalty card data from one of the UK’s largest supermarkets. We use pre-levy data to predict the effect of the tax and corroborate our

The dairy processing industry is the largest subsector in the EU food industry and is characterised by high concentration. We investigate the extent of output market power exerted in EU dairy processing, applying an advanced stochastic frontier approach to estimate firm-level markups of price over marginal cost using data for France, Italy and Spain from 2008 to 2017. We further relate markups to firm

Many stated preference studies have shown that individuals’ attitudes play an important role in explaining their behaviour and helping to disentangle preference heterogeneity. When responses to attitudinal questions are introduced into discrete choice models, a suitable approach that corrects for potential endogeneity must be adopted. We use a discrete choice experiment to analyse the preferences of

To achieve social sustainability, there is a need to incorporate social metrics of farmers’ well-being into agricultural monitoring systems. We contribute to the operationalisation of the measurement of farmers’ well-being by determining how farm-level factors influence farmers’ satisfaction with their work and quality of life. Using a data sample of 1099 farms that are part of the Farm Accountancy

In the animal health arena, government-mandated testing, herd movement restrictions, and culling of reactor (infected) animals are common practices in the midst of an infectious disease outbreak. These policies create a significant economic trade-off—on one hand, such control efforts represent a public good by reducing the negative externality of private actions associated with the transmission of

Rice is the staple food for about half of the world's population and mills are the essential processing link between farmers and consumers, making rice milling one of the most important agro-processing sectors globally. This paper assesses changes in rice and paddy prices, and processing margins during the COVID-19 pandemic shock through the lens of rice mills in Myanmar. Our data, collected through

Expanding the availability of hybrid rice varieties has been regarded as the most important measure addressing food security in developing Asian countries. The success story of hybrid rice production in China motivated the Vietnamese government to import hybrid seeds in an effort to increase rice productivity. Despite increased use of hybrid rice seeds and rising input intensity, rice productivity

Given the recognised role of blanket extension advice in the low uptake of productivity-enhancing technologies among developing country farmers, personalised or site-specific extension approaches are gaining attention. Focusing on the case of the plant clinic extension model which provides personalised crop protection services to smallholder farmers, we investigate to what extent and how accurately

Buyback auctions to reduce groundwater extraction for agriculture have been used in many real world scenarios but, to date, the impact of different auction design mechanisms for this context has not been comprehensively studied. Here, three auction design issues are studied: (i) framing the overall objective as either a budget constrained auction or a water target auction; (ii) the severity of budget

Using detailed data on veterinary, ecological, sanitary, phytosanitary and mandatory certification measures, this paper studies the effect of non-tariff measures (NTMs) on firm productivity in the food-processing industry through forward and backward linkages. Using quantity and value of output at product level, we calculate and compare quantity- and revenue-based measures of total factor productivity

Using the newly developed Hamilton filter, we decompose prices of three primary energy sources (crude oil, coal and natural gas) and five significant crops (corn, palm oil, rice, soybean and wheat) to isolate their cyclical components. Then, we apply time-difference analyses to study their co-movement. Analysing 15 energy price–crop price pairs over two periods, 1990–2009 and 2010–2020, we find that

We provide new cross-country evidence on alcohol price and income elasticities based on microdata on individual behaviour. Our approach is original as previous research mainly estimates determinants of consumption with macroeconomic data. We use the latest available wave of the European Social Survey, 2014, merged with the Annual Database of National Beverage Consumption. We estimate a generalised

The Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) is Ethiopia's poverty reduction strategy that forms the most important pillar of the country's agricultural transformation into a more productive and competitive sector. However, the extent to which the PSNP is linked to agriculture is unclear. This paper evaluates the impact of the PSNP on a range of agricultural outcomes. We use data from the Living Standard

Is the timing of food products going on sale, in the form of temporary price reductions, random or predictable? More specifically, are products more likely to go on sale the longer they remain non-promoted? We investigate the nature and timing of sales discounts using a large database based on weekly supermarket scanner prices covering 500 products for 137 weeks in the largest seven national retail

Adoption of new plant varieties has played a significant role in eradicating global hunger. Previous research has mainly focused on farmer adoption and impact of new crop varieties, although upstream adoption of technologies in plant breeding can generate substantial multiplier effects on downstream impacts. This study moves upstream in the innovation system to generate policy advice on adoption and

Agent-based models are important tools for simulating farmers’ behaviour in response to changing environmental, economic or institutional conditions and policies. This article introduces an agent-based modelling approach that combines behavioural factors with standard bio-economic modelling of agricultural production. More specifically, our framework integrates the cumulative prospect theory and social

We explore the relationship between precision agriculture (PA) technology adoption and technical efficiency using the 2016 USDA Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS). Efficiency gains from PA are likely cumulative, that is, the true impact of precision farming depends on the integration of complementary tools. To examine the efficiency benefits of different PA bundles, we perform a two-step

We examine whether projection bias is also present in virtual environments. Two hypotheses were tested using a between-subject experiment with three conditions: (i) experimental context (virtual vs. real); (ii) consumption periods (today vs. tomorrow); and (iii) appetite level (hungry vs. satiated). An exact replication of the virtual supermarket was performed in a real supermarket setting to test

The recent wave of foreign land acquisitions (FLA) has raised several concerns in terms of their environmental and social sustainability. An unexplored issue is whether pollution-haven mechanisms are driving the pattern of FLA. This paper investigates whether and how differences in environmental stringency between investing and target country affect the pattern of FLA. We estimate a panel gravity equation

In response to growing concerns about public health risks of antibiotic resistance from food production, a range of regulations have been implemented on agricultural antibiotic use worldwide. Although the Danish yellow card initiative, antibiotic quantitative restriction, is considered as the most sophisticated latest addition, no rigorous empirical research has been conducted yet. This article provides

Most studies that have evaluated the welfare impacts of agricultural input subsidy programmes (ISPs) in developing countries have focused on measuring their effects on various outcomes of interest such as agricultural productivity. I estimate the consumer surplus accrued by direct and indirect beneficiaries of ISPs in Malawi. Malawi's Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP), introduced in 2005, is the

Under the EU Common Agriculture Policy, only 11 of 19 sugar beet producing EU Member States provide coupled direct payments for sugar beet. This paper analyses the market effects of this uneven implementation of an agricultural policy instrument along the sugar supply chain, focusing in particular on changes in sugar production in individual EU Member States. In addition to previous literature, the

This paper studies Chinese grape growers’ time discounting and its implications for the adoption of technology that can reduce the negative effects of increasing precipitation. Using primary data collected in Xinjiang Province, we undertook a contingent valuation of rain covers that protect fruit from rain and estimated a discounted utility model using these data. Using a hierarchical Bayesian approach

Increased deployment of agricultural extension agents (EAs) in rural areas is recommended to spur agricultural productivity and mitigate spatial imbalances in welfare. However, high turnover and low motivation levels of EAs in remote areas pose challenges for equitable service provision and, in some cases, exacerbate geographical welfare disparities. We assess the effectiveness of selected potential

The massive expansion of oil palm in tropical regions has substantial implications for socioeconomic development. Several studies show that smallholder farmers benefit economically from cultivating oil palm. However, most existing studies examine short-term impacts with cross-sectional data, which has two disadvantages. First, issues of endogeneity are difficult to address with cross-sectional data

Submissions to the Journal have increased again to an all‐time high of 528, and continue their strong international pattern. Our response times continue to meet or exceed our targets, with only one regrettable exception, for which our sincere apologies. The JAE’s citation impact factor reached an all time high of 2.53 in 2019, though current indications that our 2020 score may not be quite as high