The lack of collateral prevents small-scale farm producers and processors from accessing commercial credit. Th is negatively affects farm productivity and product quality, limits the export potential of products, and prevents further development of the food supply chain. This paper reviews the...

The newly acceded Central and Eastern European states find their rural development strategy should fit into the European Union’s (EU) framework and policy for rural development. The EU’s approach is based on using rural networks for policy implementation, or building networks where...

China prioritized a New Socialist Countryside reform policy in 2005 to address the growing disparities in incomes and living standards between rural and urban populations. These policies are evaluated to provide a base line index of reform concerning farmer, agricultural, and rural economic...

The effects of globalization on smaller nation Caribbean states have not been thoroughly examined, and the trade performance of these states has not been evaluated since the WTO came into existence. In this paper, we report on a study that conducted a comparative analysis of selected Caribbean...

At present there are 1425 tariff rate quotas (TRQs) notified by member countries to the World Trade Organization. TRQs were provided for in the Uruguay Round as a trade policy instrument to guarantee minimum market access for politically sensitive agricultural imports, and in some cases to...

This paper presents preliminary results on the possible demand for weather insurance in China. Results from 1,564 farm households from Western and Central China between October 2007 and October 2008 suggest that the greater risk for farmers is drought followed by excessive rain. Heat is less...

While economies of scope of lending and mobilizing deposits in banking are justifiedtheoretically (Diamond, 1984) and found empirically (see Saunders, 1999), in microfinance, theexistence and the magnitudes of scope economies has not been investigated. We use a semiparametric smooth coefficient...

The study explores a long memory conditional volatility model on international grain markets, demonstrating importance of modeling both temporal effects of volatility and long memory process. This study adopts six different volatility models, nested in an ARMA(p,q)- FIGARCH(P,D,Q), to capture...

Almost universally, implementers of index insurance for low income households have chosen to embed insurance with other interventions designed to improve productivity, with the insurance used almost entirely to make the other interventions possible. A common example is to use the insurance to...

Poster prepared for presentation at the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association 2010 AAEA,CAES, & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado, July 25-27, 2010.