This study proposes an environmental identity economics theory that can improve our understanding of pro-environmental behaviour. We test the potential of the theory by analysing farmers’ decisions to invest in renewable energy production using a hybrid choice model. Our findings illustrate that farmers with a strong environmental identity require less financial incentive to invest. Furthermore, lower

AbstractWe analyse how Brexit will affect European agrifood trade using a structural gravity model and by comparing the present deal to four alternative scenarios on the UK’s trade policy. European Union (EU) countries will suffer marginal drops in imports, exports and real income, with stronger effects for Ireland. EU exports to the UK will drop by 10 per cent. European products will be redirected

This paper assesses the relative advantage of drought-tolerant (DT) maize, conditional on drought severity, using an unbalanced panel of 4 years of on-farm yield trials and high-resolution precipitation data (10-day measurements at a 0.05° resolution) in Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Under rain-fed conditions, DT maize yield exceeds that of other varieties: 7 per cent higher yields on average

It is generally accepted that adaptation to climate variability requires a technological advancement strategy. However, the innovation process has received little explicit consideration in this framework. We employ a panel endogenous switching regression model to explore whether and to what extent climate variability affects firm performance through the ability to induce the development of adaptation

Food banks play a critical part in the food distribution system. In this paper, we examine the impact of food bank donations on retailer markups using data on donations and store-level productivity. We frame our empirical model of food bank donations and store-level markups as an example of quality-based price discrimination and find that stores that donate more food to the local food bank are able

The ALIMASSENS Collaborative Project funded by the French National Research AgencyANR-14-CE20-0003The AgreenSkills fellowship programmeFP7-609398

AbstractNorway recently increased the effective levy used to fund its export promotion programme for whitefish by 21 per cent. Study results suggest the intensified programme is welfare increasing. The net social gain, defined as the difference between the increase in economic surplus associated with the increased advertising and the decrease in economic surplus associated with the increased effective

AbstractThe African Continental Free Trade Area agreement will create the largest single market in the world in terms of the number of countries and people. We analyse the effects of regional trade liberalisation on production fragmentation and networks using a global computable general equilibrium model adapted to take into account the value-added structure of international trade. This permits the

Policies for investment in biofuel production facilities and feedstock may be necessary in order to meet climate and renewable energy targets. These policies entail a trade-off between high transportation costs of biomass and economies of scale of production facilities. We develop a spatial optimisation model and investigate the cost-effective localization of production facilities for ethanol from

This paper studies the impact of foreign labour on the competitiveness of Italian dairy farms relying on the theory of foreign labour in profit functions. Application of an endogenous switching regression model identifies the drivers of adoption of the immigrant workforce. A counterfactual analysis performed on unit labour costs between farms employing and non-employing immigrants suggests the essential

AbstractAgricultural policymakers call for the operationalisation of farm resilience as a dynamic concept. Therefore, we quantify farm resilience along the dimensions of robustness, adaptation and transformation. Using the rich Farm Accountancy Data Network panel data set, we explore which farm(er) characteristics affect resilience. We employ a control function approach to address the presence of endogeneity

There is an emerging body of evidence to suggest that nudges can motivate behaviour change. The question as to whether using nudges in tandem ‘crowds out’ the marginal effectiveness of each one has attracted little attention. Using a randomised survey experiment consisting of 1,800 farmers, we tested the impact of two nudge interventions (injunctive norm and social signalling) when used individually

In this study of Swedish farms from 2007 to 2016, we estimate the effects of investment support from the Common Agricultural Policy on indicators of farm performance, focusing on long-term effects. To isolate the impact and alleviate problems of selection bias, we employ a counterfactual empirical design using Coarsened Exact Matching and dynamic panel fixed-effects estimations. The average treatment

AbstractUsing a stated preference survey, we investigate to what extent consumers are willing to make costlier food consumption choices to decrease damages to health, the environment, and animal well-being. In particular, we investigate how the graphic design of the labels affects choice behaviour by comparing traffic–light and greyscale labels and plain-text description with each other. We found that

This paper reviews the state-of-the-art work on agri-food Multinational Enterprises (MNEs), by discussing the current state-of-play and the tools at our disposal to expand knowledge. After a critical discussion of available data, new data from OECD are used to provide a broad overview of the role of MNEs in the agri-food Global Value Chains (GVCs) and to draw a few stylized facts. Data reveals that

The experimental mindset strips down and mimics social constructs in a setting we can use to understand how institutions create or destroy economic value. We explore how to use the mindset to consider climate change mitigation, in which more investment in climate mitigation by the collective, the less costly for each party. Using the lab to capture Conference of the Parties declining-cost environment

AbstractThis paper investigates the farm-level relationship between total factor productivity (TFP) and presence and composition of immigrant workers. A theoretical model expressing how immigrant workforce influences productivity is developed and an explicit and consistent representation of the so-called ‘diversity hypothesis’ is derived. A dynamic panel specification is estimated, and the respective

The agricultural sector is undergoing a period of rapid transformation, driven by the powerful and interconnected impacts of climate change, demographic transitions and uneven economic growth around the world. For governments and the international community to navigate this period of upheaval to protect vulnerable populations and ensure positive societal change will require a similar degree of transformation

This paper focuses on policies that are enlightened by behavioural insights (BIs), taking decision-makers’ biases and use of heuristics into account and utilising a people-centric perspective and full acknowledgement of context dependency. Considering both the environmental and pandemic crises, it sketches the goal of resilient food systems and describes the contours of behavioural food policy. Conceptually

AbstractWe examine the dynamics of the margin between retail and international coffee prices from 1980 to 2018. We find no significant trend in the margin using a robust procedure for estimating a trend. Further, we establish that any deviations in the margin are transitory for the full sample as well as the periods prior to and after the demise of the ICA, but with asymmetric adjustment. One of the

Are agricultural economists losing their relevance and significance in research on sustainable food systems? Could the world thrive without the contribution of agricultural economists? How could agricultural economists have more impact in addressing the grand challenges of our time? In this paper we address these questions by reflecting on the field of agricultural economics and re-examining the role

European Review of Agricultural Economics, doi: 10.1093/erae/jbab008.

AbstractPrevious literature have shown that warming temperatures due to climate change are likely to decrease mean crop yields and increase crop yield risk. However, there is limited understanding of how crop insurance participation can potentially affect the adverse crop yield impacts of warming (or extreme heat). This study specifically examines whether crop insurance participation influences the

AbstractThis artefactual field experiment explores consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) price premiums for fish products to avoid the risk and uncertainty of purchasing inauthentic produce. The influence of subjective probabilistic beliefs, risk and ambiguity preferences is investigated. Participants’ WTP is elicited using experimental auctions, while behavioural factors are elicited using incentivised

European Review of Agricultural Economics, Volume 48, Issue 1, January 2021, Pages 60–96, doi: 10.1093/erae/jbaa019

Increasing agricultural productivity by promoting high-yielding and micronutrient-rich crop varieties has the potential to reduce poverty and malnutrition. However, getting these technologies into the hands of smallholders remains a challenge. This paper presents results from a randomised field experiment that uses rural primary schools as dissemination hubs for improved orange-fleshed sweet potato

Enhancing agricultural productivity through the adoption of improved technologies presents a credible pathway to economic development and poverty reduction especially through increased commercialisation of production. We used a triple hurdle (TH) model to estimate the production and commercialisation of smallholder farmers in Ethiopia. In doing so, we account for the adoption of improved Cicer arietinum

We applied discrete choice contingent valuation to the amenities consumed by non-industrial private forest owners in Andalusia (Spain) in a survey of 765 landowners. The landowners’ median willingness to accept compensation from an alternative investment for giving up land amenity consumption is EUR 387.8 per hectare yearly. The preferred model shows diminishing marginal values of amenity consumption

KoesterUlrichFoundations of Agricultural Market Analysis and Agricultural Policy Verlag Franz Vahlen München, München, 2020. ISBN Print: 978-3-8006-6364-4; ISBN E-Book: 978 3 8006 6350 7 (the reviewed version), Price: US$40.04 (e-book)

AbstractA split-panel latent class stochastic frontier model is applied to account for technological heterogeneity among Swiss dairy farms and to assess the potential performance improvements through technology choice and change over 11 years. Three technology classes with substantially different productivity levels are identified considering the unobserved and observed farm characteristics. Technologies

We use a business management game to investigate how a pesticide tax and a green nudge affect crop, tillage and pesticide decisions for a virtual farm. Results from German farmers reveal that both policies can reduce pesticide applications. The pesticide tax involves a substantial profit loss. Unlike in the green nudge scenario, participants under pesticide tax adjust their cropping and tillage strategies

We assessed the economic effects of the agricultural policy that is proposed as part of the 2016 peace accord in Colombia. We used a newly built social accounting matrix for Colombia to calibrate a computable general equilibrium model. We found that the value added, demand for labour and factor incomes increased in the areas most affected by the conflict, while the opposite occurred in the other areas

AbstractBulking and mixing of smallholder supply dilutes incentives to supply high quality. We introduce wheat ‘grading and certification shops’ in Ethiopia and use an auction design to gauge willingness-to-pay (WTP) for certification. Bids correlate positively with wheat quality, and ex ante notification of the opportunity of certification improves wheat quality. These findings suggest that local

We analyse the effects of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area between the European Union (EU) and Ukraine on the world’s sunflower complex markets. We develop a spatial equilibrium model that incorporates the vertical and horizontal links between the primary commodity (seeds) and two final by-products (oil and meal). Our empirical analysis covers eight regions—the leading producers and consumers

Simultaneous spikes in global prices of many agricultural commodities in recent years have induced an interest in quantifying the degree of synchronisation of these movements. We suggest a conceptual framework explaining why temporally varying price synchronisation may happen and propose the concordance index for the empirical measurement of the incidence, symmetry and permanence of synchronisation

Viable farm households contribute to the resilience of agricultural and food systems. Farm income is a policy-relevant proxy for this viability. Here, we address three key aspects of farm income: first, the income issue, focusing on (average) income levels; second, the variability issue, focusing on income risks faced by farmers; and third, the inequality issue, focusing on the heterogeneity and (in-)equalities

Crop producers face significant and increasing drought risks. We evaluate whether insurances based on globally and freely available satellite-retrieved soil moisture data can reduce farms’ financial drought risk exposure. We design farm individual soil moisture index insurances for wheat, maize and rapeseed production using a case study for Eastern Germany. We find that the satellite-retrieved soil

This paper analyses the effects of the 2013 Common Agricultural Policy reforms on the distribution of direct payments across the European Union (EU) member states. The differential implementation of two key redistributive policies across countries from 2014 onwards enables the use of a generalised difference-in-differences strategy to estimate their distributional effects. Using data on EU-wide direct

We contribute to understanding the impact of potential drivers of farm income inequality and the redistributive impact of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payments. Our approach provides information at any quantile of the income distribution, in contrast to the widely used Gini coefficient. Income growth and inequality dynamics of French commercial farms between 2000 and 2017 are found to be explained

Reducing the usage of fossil fuels is a central issue in ongoing policy debates. This in particular holds for Dutch horticulture, given its energy-intensive production. We analyse differences in energy usage and price responsiveness of horticultural firms by estimating energy demand functions using a Bayesian random coefficient model. Beyond, the effects of a proposed energy tax are assessed. Allowing

This article investigates the causal relationship between family farming and rural labour markets. To this end, we combine farm accountancy data and public labour market statistics at the district level (NUTS-3) for the years 2008–2013. While cross-sectional regressions reveal a strong and robust negative correlation between the share of family farm labour and unemployment rate in a region, fixed-effects

The impact of the European Union common agricultural policy direct payments on land prices has received substantial attention in recent years, leading to heterogeneous evidence of capitalisation for both coupled and decoupled payments. In this paper, we provide an extensive review of the empirical works addressing this issue econometrically and compare their results through a Bayesian meta-regression

Credit markets are key instruments by which liquidity-constrained smallholder farmers may finance productive investments. However, the documented low demand and uptake of agricultural credit by smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa pose challenges for energizing rural transformation in the region. In this paper, we investigate the impact of rainfall uncertainty—a major source of production risk—on

This article investigates the effects of economic performance and neighbours’ characteristics on farmers’ exit behaviour before retirement age. Using a unique set of social security data describing all French farmers under 50 over the years 2004–2017, we explore how these effects depend on farmers’ characteristics and how they stand relative to their neighbours. Our probit estimations reveal that younger

In this study, we examine the effects of own and peer adoption of improved soybean variety on household yields and food and nutrient consumption, using observational data from Ghana. We employ the marginal treatment effect approach to account for treatment effect heterogeneity across households and a number of identification strategies to capture social network effects. Our empirical results show that

The European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, in short EAAEP Foundation, is seeking to appoint a new Editor for the European Review of Agricultural Economics (hereafter: ERAE or the Review) for the period beginning September 2021 (or as soon as possible thereafter). The new appointment is to replace Jack Peerlings who will step down next year. Candidates should have an extensive

This paper analyses farmland price formation under investors’ increased demand in the Czech Republic from 2008 to 2014. We adopt a stochastic metafrontier approach to hedonic price modelling and investigate the relative differences in farm and investor pricing. Our results provide evidence of buyer group-specific land valuations, asymmetric price dispersions and their temporal changes. These changes

Nearly 80 per cent of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) expenditures are spent on three different measures: first pillar payments (FPPs), agri-environmental payments (AEPs) and less favoured area payments (LFAPs). Based on a dynamic panel model and farm accounting data for Bavaria, we find that, on average, 30 per cent of FPPs, 40–50 per cent of LFAPs, but no relevant share of AEPs are capitalised into

Land is a crucial production factor in agriculture. However, it is usually in short supply, and its supply has been decreasing due to competition from non-agricultural uses. In the last decade, the price of land increased significantly in many parts of the world. Although boom and bust cycles are not new to land markets, current developments are considered to result from a new constellation of driving

AbstractWritten employment contracts may improve the conditions of agricultural workers in developing countries, but farmers as employers often prefer less formal oral arrangements. We evaluate whether farmers’ preferences, which are deeply rooted in traditional norms, can be influenced through a group awareness campaign. In a randomised experiment in Côte d’Ivoire, we show that such a campaign increases

AbstractThis article evaluates the short-term impacts of a fruit fly integrated pest management program in Peru. Exploiting arbitrary variation in the program’s intervention borders, we use a geographical regression discontinuity design to identify the program’s effects on agricultural outcomes. Pre-treatment balance tests show that producer and farm-level pre-treatment characteristics evolve smoothly

Market heterogeneity may affect the distributional incidence of nutritional taxes if households sort by income across markets with different characteristics. We use scanner data to analyse the distributional incidence of the 2012 French soda tax on Exact Price Indices that measure consumer welfare from the price and availability of soft-drinks at a local level. While the average pass-through was small—about

This paper assesses how cross-country differences in public mandatory food standards affect trade, prices and product quality upgrading in the agri-food sector. We estimate different gravity-type models that exploit the bilateral difference in maximum residue limits (MRLs) over the period from 2005 to 2014 for 145 products across 59 countries. Our findings show that cross-country differences in MRLs

Although past research has tried to refine stated preferences elicited under discrete choice experiments (DCEs) by using methods to mitigate the hypothetical bias problem, little has been done to explore the consistency of preferences in repeated choice experiments. A key assumption of most DCEs is that individual’s preferences are stable across choice sets and remain unchanged throughout the experiment

We investigate factors which may drive the number of agents who compete for a specific piece of agricultural land by fitting count data models on data originating from a local committee, the CDOA, which is responsible for agricultural guidance of the prefect in delivering the necessary ‘authorizations to farm’. We notably find that the size of the offered land positively contributes to the competitor

Previous studies provide conflicting evidence on the degree to which Federal Reserve surveys of agricultural bankers provide useful information on the future direction of farm real estate values. We use unbalanced panel of responses from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s Land Values and Credit Conditions Survey between 1993Q1 and 2019Q2 to empirically test adaptive, rational and extrapolative expectations

Climate change increases the need for better insurance solutions that enable farmers to cope with drought risks. We design weather index insurance using drought indices based on precipitation, soil moisture and evapotranspiration as underlying drought index and compare their risk-reducing potential for winter wheat producers in Eastern Germany. In general, we find that all drought indices can reduce

Fulani ethnic militia (FEM) violence has increased significantly in recent years, making it one of the most lethal groups in the world. However, empirical evidence on the impacts of FEM on agriculture is scarce. We investigate the agricultural impacts of such violence in the case of Nigeria using a nationally representative panel dataset and armed conflict data. We find that increased FEM violence

We investigate the impact of per-unit duties (i.e. tariffs expressed in US dollars per unit of imported product) on world agricultural trade patterns. Using detailed data on trade and tariffs, we show first that they induce higher export unit values, confirming that the Alchian–Allen conjecture can be extended to per-unit duties. Second, we show that this effect is higher for developed countries, which

In semi-arid lands, the resilience of farmers facing climate change is uncertain. The main objective of this paper is to explore whether mutual assistance within a group of cotton farmers implies reduced adoption of risk-mitigating strategies. I investigate the case of Burkina Faso where cotton farmers collectively purchase inputs from the cotton wholesale companies and pay for their purchase under