If the capital metaphor is to be taken seriously, social capital must focus on sources and not consequences. Human motive is the equivalent of physical capital goods which can perform transformative functions such as creating utility for one person out of the consumption of another and solving...

The generation of trust between business partners is a strategic issue for firms in competitive agri-food markets. It is asserted that business associations can be important facilitators of trust between firms. Cross-national comparative research on the UK and Dutch potato industries is...

Economists, including agricultural economists, have a long history of recognizing the importance of the behavioral foundations in decision making while ignoring these observable human dimensions in their economic models. The economics of social capital and trust, two important human...

Tension between farm operators and their surrounding neighbors within rural communities continues to escalate as residents become increasingly removed from production agriculture. An expanding gap exists between public perceptions of the effects of the structure and production practices of...

Important features of the safe minimum standard (SMS) rule as outlined by Ciriacy-Wantrup are ignored in the recent literature, e.g., the critical zone, institutional and normative dimensions, and the relationship between economic and biological irreversibility. Also, seeing SMS as an adjunct to...

The decisions of young adults from non-metropolitan areas to either migrate to metropolitan areas or remain in non-metropolitan areas following the completion of schooling are studied in this paper. The migration decision is decomposed into an hourly initial earnings component and a cost...

Most empirical models of consumer choice assume that the decision-maker assesses all alternatives and information in a perfect information processing sense. The complexity of the choice environment, the ability of the individual to make complex decisions and the effect of choice context on the...

Social capital in the past two decades has emerged as a dominant paradigm in the various social science disciplines. However, its adoption by the different social science disciplines has led to multiple and often conflicting definitions of social capital. Some differences in the definition of...

Social capital is about relationships that are often based on earned or inherited kernels of commonality. Social capital raises the ethical question of when relationships should be allowed to influence outcomes. The essential theory underlying the social capital paradigm is that relationships of...