This paper addresses the apparent paradox between widespread support of cattle farming by agricultural policy interventions and negative returns to cattle as stressed in recent works. Using a representative panel dataset for Andhra Pradesh, a state in the south of India, we examine average and...

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, it compares the performance of various panel data models in estimating technical efficiency in production. Second, it applies various stochastic frontier panel data models to estimate the technical efficiency of Iran's cotton production and to...

This paper addresses the apparent paradox between widespread support of cattle farming by agricultural policy interventions and negative returns to cattle as stressed in recent works. Using a representative panel dataset for Andhra Pradesh, a state in the south of India, we examine average and...

The aging of the farmer population has led to concern about a shortage of beginning farmers and ranchers. This study investigates the impact of health insurance coverage and participation in government and private insurance programs on off-farm labor allocation decisions of beginning...

About two-thirds of U.S. farm households are employed off the farm. Off-farm sources represent 85 percent of the income earned by the average farm household and have turned into their main source of health insurance coverage. Farmers receive various government farm program payments, including...

The study investigates the effect of the spouse's access to financial services (credit or savings) through membership in a self-help group on adopting technology, technical efficiency, and managerial gaps. To estimate the empirical model, we use farm-level data from rice farming households in...

The farm crisis in the United States in the 1980s had profound effects on rural, agricultural regions of the country, but almost no impact on urban and suburban areas. I use a difference-in-difference methodology and find that religiosity as measured by religious attendance increased...

Worldwide, most farms are small and family-operated. This study discusses the future of smallholder agriculture in China, where most farms are small, and farms' parcels are fragmented. The study puts forward a framework of vertical division of labor and specialized production in agriculture. We...

We examine the impact of a six-fold increase in the global vanilla price on smallholder vanilla-farming households in Madagascar. The price increase leads to sizable gains in household assets and significant improvements in adult psychological well-being, cognitive performance, and optimism...

In the past decade, the European agricultural sector has undergone rapid structural change. Part of that change is manifested in extended early retirement plans. As pensions play a crucial role in determining the characteristics the change, it is important to establish the factors determining...