In this study, we test the hypothesis that small-scale testing can reduce the risk and uncertainty of trying new technologies. We conducted a field experiment, in a cluster randomised control trial setting, to examine whether the availability of divisible packages of seeds influences smallholder farmers’ decisions to try a new wheat variety. Our results show that the adoption of the newly introduced

The effects of agricultural technology adoption on farm performance have been studied extensively but with limited information on who should be targeted during scaling-up. We adopt the newly defined marginal treatment effect approach in examining how farmers’ resource endowment and unobserved factors influence the marginal benefits of adopting sustainable intensification (SI) practices. We estimate

Throughout its history, several attempts have been made to map the structure and subfields of agricultural economics; however, these attempts either rely on the experience of distinguished scholars or require processing a massive amount of textual data. This paper investigates the structural dynamics of agricultural economics, focusing on the changing frequency of different subfields and the diversification

This paper studies the profitability of investments in agricultural land, using the rent–price ratio (RPR) as a profitability measure. In order to allow for district-level heterogeneity, the full conditional distribution of the RPR is modelled using a generalised additive model for location, shape and scale. The analysis is based on data from Lower Saxony, Germany. The profitability of investments

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

This study examines the question of selling agricultural commodities by auction or directly. Hedonic price analysis using transaction data from the sale of frozen cod in Norway shows that buyer–seller matches explain 32.4 and 13.6 per cent of the price variation in direct sales and auctions, respectively, indicating that direct sales are more informationally efficient than auctions. Meanwhile, auctions

We apply a multivariate mixed-data sampling (MIDAS) conditional quantile regression technique to understand the dairy commodity exposure of European dairy firms. Leveraging a theoretically sound hedonic dairy pricing framework, we show that our approach is able to identify both market and operational risk. Profit margins for butter and milk price are particularly important for operational performance

Norway 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 levy

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

The 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 analysis

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

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

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

Agricultural 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

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

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

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

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

We 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 to both

Using 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 the

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

Previous 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 impact

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

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

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 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 and

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

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

We 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 reasons

Food values are supposed to be stable. This paper tests this assumption by comparing food values before and during the coronavirus-19 pandemic. While the ranking of food values remains very similar, there are some interesting differences in the relative importance that consumers attached to food values before and during the pandemic. A substantial decrease in the importance that consumers attach to

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

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)

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

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

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

Bulking 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 wheat markets

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

This article theoretically and empirically disentangles the effects of maximum residue limits (MRLs) for pesticides on production, export supply and import demand. We adopt a modelling approach based on the costs and benefits associated with food safety standards and use our theoretical framework to assess the empirical net effects of MRLs for pesticides on African mango production and trade with Organisation

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

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 paper examines how differences in motivation in terms of use and non-use values affect the choice of animal welfare improvement practices. The application is focused on Swedish dairy farmers’ preferences for different flooring systems’ attributes. Using multiple indicators and multiple causes and hybrid latent class models, the findings demonstrate that dairy farmers who favour flooring solutions

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

Increasingly, European dairy farmers have to manage the raw milk price risk. Price hedging for raw milk and an increasing number of individual fixed-price contracts with processors are now available. However, the choice of hedging a certain share of milk output still leaves individual farmers facing a complex decision. The cash flow model in this study explains the probability of a typical northern

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

In this paper we examine the effect of competition on price dispersion and argue that the effect is contingent on the ability of firms to meet market demand. Our comparative static results show that competition among symmetrically capacity-unconstrained firms, or among firms with asymmetric capacities leads to an overall price increase along the distribution function. To investigate these findings