This paper provides an assessment of technical efficiency and productivity change for a sample of large-scale arable farms in Germany. For this, the paper applies input-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Malmquist Index (MI) methods in combination with bootstrapping to a balanced...

Financial savings at the household level are vital for poverty alleviation, yet they face social, psychological and institutional obstacles. Over recent years, mobile phones have proven effective in enhancing financial inclusion. However, when individuals decide how to save, their preferences...

A farmer's uncertainty preferences can play a large role in how he makes production decisions on the farm. We attempt to understand how farmers' household characteristics as well as past harvest shocks affect uncertainty preferences of maize farmers in southern Mexico. By using a series of...

This article shows that including inconsistent subjects in a Holt-and-Laury analysis will bias the mean, as well as the variance of the risk attitudes of the subject group of interest to an extent that cannot be determined a priori and that must not be neglected. One might be tempted to simply...

Es ist seit langem bekannt, dass das Wetter den Hauptunsicherheitsfaktor in der pflanzlichen Produktion darstellt. Seit einiger Zeit wird der Einsatz von Wetterderivaten zur Absicherung gegen wetterbedingte Ertragsschwankungen diskutiert. In diesem Beitrag wird am Beispiel ei-nes...

Agricultural production relies to a great extent on biological processes in natural environments. In addition to volatile prices, it is thus heavily exposed to risks caused by the variability of natural conditions such as rainfall, temperature and pests. With a view to the apparently lacking...

This paper examines whether there is room for the improvement of farm program decisions through the incorporation of mathematical optimization in the practical planning process. Probing the potential for improvement, we investigate the cases of four German cash crop farms over the last six...

Investment behavior at the firm level is characterized by lumpy adjustments and frequent periods of inactivity. Low investment rates are particularly puzzling in transition economies where an urgent need of modernization exists. The literature offers two explanations for. Firstly,...

Agricultural production relies to a great extent on biological processes in natural environments. In addition to volatile prices, it is thus heavily exposed to risks caused by the variability of natural conditions such as rainfall, temperature and pests. With a view to the apparently lacking...