In this paper I offer a conceptualisation of social security and income redistribution schemes which highlights the strong overlaps between the two. Indeed, it is virtually impossible to disentangle the two in practice. The major conclusion is that any assessment of one cannot proceed without...

International markets for agricultural products are often subject to a range of trade barriers, and horticultural products are no exception. This paper examines the economic implications of tariffs and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) regulations that are applied to global markets for fresh...

We present a model of market adoption (participation) where the presence of non-negligible fixed costs leads to non-zero censoring of the traditional double-hurdle regression. Fixed costs arise due to household resources that must be devoted a priori to the decision to participate in the market....

This paper discusses the effects of Angola’s mineral wealth on the process of agricultural development. Though Angola has a rich agricultural resource base its history of civil war and extreme real exchange rate distortions has resulted in agricultural stagnation through many parts of the...

A measure of entrepreneur success is important to identify current and future successful ventures, to further our understanding of the entrepreneurial process and to guide public policies to improve the success rate of start-ups. In this paper we propose an index of entrepreneur success that...

Cashew is by far the most important cash crop grown in Guinea Bissau. Indeed, the degree of export dependence on this crop exceeds even the export dependence of most members of OPEC on oil exports. This paper provides an overview of the current system of cashew production in Guinea Bissau and...

Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) have risen to the forefront as invaluable institutions in the development process. Nevertheless, capital constraints have hindered the expansion of microfinance programs such that the demand for financial services still far exceeds the currently available supply....

sector employment, uncovered sector employment, and unemployment. The impact of these labor market adjustments on absolute poverty will depend on how the pattern of employment composition changes within households and on how income is shared within households. An earlier paper (Fields and...

A real option analysis of dry-grind corn ethanol plants compared to a standard net present value analysis (NPV) shows that the option values increase entry prices and lower exit prices of investment and disinvestment considerably. For a large plant, the gross margin of ethanol price over the...