In Sub-Sahara Africa, adoption rates of improved crop varieties remain relatively low, which is partly due to farmers’ limited access to information. In smallholder settings, information often spreads through informal networks. Better understanding of such networks could potentially help to...

Guided by the frame work of a household model under credit market failure, this paper aims at investigating the impact of access to credit on the adoption of hybrid maize among households that vary in their credit constraints. The data used in the study is from Malawi collected by the...

This study compares the empirical performances of the parametric distance functions(PDF) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) with applications to adopters of improved cereal production technology in eastern Ethiopia. The results from both approaches revealed substantial technical inefficiencies...

In Malawi, maize is the major crop and food staple. Given limited off-farm employment opportunities, much-needed increases in household income for improving food security must come from gains in agricultural productivity through better technology and more profitable crops. In the past, hybrid...

Guided by the frame work of a household model under credit market failure, this paper aims at investigating the impact of access to credit on the adoption of hybrid maize among households that vary in their credit constraints. The data used in the study is from Malawi collected by the...

The goal of the TOPMARD project is to develop a model of agriculture and rural development to better understand the agronomic, ecological, economic and social dimensions of rural regions. The resulting model, (Policy Model of Multifunctional Agriculture and Rural Development) was built...

This paper presents the application of the sensitivity analysis techniques Design of Experiments (DOE) and metamodelling to the agent-based model AgriPoliS, which is a spatial and dynamic simulation model of regional structural change. DOE and metamodelling provide a more systematic analysis of...

This paper develops a game - theoretic model of heterogeneous consumers to analyze the effect of cooperative involvement on quality- enhancing product innovation activity, the pricing of food products, and the welfare of the groups involved in the context of a mixed duopoly where an...

This paper analyses the adoption process of water-conserving irrigation technologies by a risk averse farmer in a context of uncertain water availability. Firstly, it is analytically shown that the increase in water efficiency that the new technology allows results in a decrease in the cost of...

This paper aims at investigating the price-induced innovation hypothesis in Italian agriculture over the years 1951 to 1991. Price-inducement hypothesis is analysed and tested within the framework proposed by Peeters and Surry (2000). The major difference is the short-run specification of the...