Voluntary environmental agreements have been popular with government agencies in several countries. However, many questions remain about their efficiency as a regulatory tool. Recent analyses suggest that they are more effective than conventional regulatory or economic approaches when dealing...

The decision to replant a fire blight-susceptible apple orchard is analyzed. Embedding the problem into an equilibrium framework facilitates the welfare analysis of changes in orchard survival probabilities arising from a ban on antibiotics use. We estimate the structural impacts and welfare...

The widespread use of pesticides in agriculture provides a particularly complex pattern of multidimensional negative side-effects, ranging from food safety related effects to the deterioration of farmland ecosystems. The assessment of the economic implications of such negative processes is...

Replaced with revised version of paper 11/18/08.

The aim of this paper is to carry out a comparative analysis of alternative methods on constructing composite indicators to measure global sustainability of the agricultural sector. This comparison is implemented empirically on the irrigated agriculture of the Duero basin (Spain) as a case...

Our optimal control model identifies economic reasons as to why farmland bird populations have dramatically declined in modern agricultural landscapes. By integrating recreational wildlife values into farm level decision-making on arable crop choice and herbicide use, we derive those economic...

Proposals of the European Commission stress the future importance of agri-environmental payments within the rural development policy of the European Union. The aim of this paper is to present and discuss a model for choice for plant species protection contracts in the Netherlands. The model...

Following the decoupling of the cotton subsidies in 2006 the production system has become less intensive in input usage with an average yield reduction of 40 per cent. Albeit the farm income has not been reduced, the reform has had a negative effect on the economy of some rural areas of Southern...