Two important reasons for the limited access to formal credit experienced by rural small farmers in developing countries are information asymmetry and lack of collateral. For formal lenders, these conditions present a challenge to prudent risk management. Sustainable agriculture in sub-Saharan...

Increasing penalty structures for repeat offenses are ubiquitous in penal codes, despite little empirical or theoretical support. Multi-period models of criminal enforcement based on the standard economic approach of Becker (1968) generally find that the optimal penalty structure is either flat...

This paper measures the relative efficiency of 50 municipal police departments in New York State using an output-oriented data envelopment analysis programming model and finds that 30 departments are efficient, while 20 could improve their efficiency. Adoption of best practice methods in the 20...

Increasing penalty structures for repeat offenses are ubiquitous in penal codes, despite little empirical or theoretical support. Multi-period models of criminal enforcement based on the standard economic approach of Becker (1968) generally find that the optimal penalty structure is either flat...

The non-farm sector is crucial to rural households in transition economies since it offers employment, reduces urban migration and can contribute to poverty reduction, economic growth and a more equal income distribution. This study on diversification decisions and rural incomes reviews evidence...

Most policy and research interest regarding rural credit markets revolves around the perception that poor households in developing countries lack access to credit, which is believed to have negative consequences for household welfare. An important feature of the rural credit market is that...

In 1983 decentralization was already being described as the latest fashion in development administration and it has been gaining in popularity ever since. This theoretical concept has been embraced world-wide and incorporated into economic and political reform plans. In this paper, the...

Rural non-farm employment (RNFE) is thought to ease poverty, economic vulnerability and income inequality. Two key questions arise: (1) Do alternative income sources actually help to raise the welfare of small family farms? (2) How is the rural regional income distribution affected by mixed...

Social capital matters in determining a person’s or a family’s material well-being. It is argued that social capital functions similar to the traditional production factors. However, there are not many empirical analyses looking into this hypothesis at the farm-household level in...