This paper introduces the concepts and aims of sustainable agriculture in China. Sustainable agricultural development comprises sustainability of agricultural production, sustainability of the rural economy, ecological and environmental sustainability within agricultural systems and sustainability of rural society. China's prime aim is to ensure current and future food security. Based on projec...

Policy makers in the United States often justify agricultural subsidies by stressing that agriculture is the engine of the rural economy. We use the increase in crop prices in the late 2000s to estimate the marginal effect of increased agricultural revenues on local economies in the U.S. Heartland. We find that $1 more in crop revenue generated 64¢ in personal income, with most going to farm pr...

The technology-driven evolution of crop plants from producers of basic food and fiber materials to producers of a broader range of specific molecules involved in human health and well-being is well under way. It will mark the beginning of a fundamental change in agricultural practices and the farm economy. The relentless discovery of naturally produced molecules in plants and their direct invol...

In this paper, we analyze the effects of oil revenue shocks on different sectors of the Iranian economy. We use quarterly data of the Iranian economy from 1988:2 to 2011:1 to analyze a time-varying parameter VAR model with the Bayesian method. The results show that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the positive effects of oil revenue were mostly emerged in the industrial and oil sectors, havin...

Article history: Received 22 April 2011 Received in revised form 8 April 2013 Accepted 14 April 2013 Available online 23 April 2013 Using a panel dataset of 31 provinces in China, this paper computes the output-oriented Malmquist productivity indexes and their decomposition in China's agricultural sector over the period 1994–2008. In the second-stage regression, which uses the efficiency change...

This paper examines the political economy of coordination in a simple two-sector model in which individuals’ choice of agricultural technology affects industrialization. We show that multiple equilibria exist such that the economy is either characterized by the use of a traditional agricultural technology and low industrialization or the use of a mechanized technology and high industrialization...

The theory of neoclassical welfare economics largely shaped international and national agricultural policies during the Cold War period. It treated technology as an exogenous factor that could boost agricultural productivity but not necessarily sustainable agriculture. New growth theory, the economic theory of the new knowledge economy, treats technological change as endogenous and argues that ...

The largest share of policy and money within the European Union goes to agriculture. The Union’s Common Agricultural Policy has undergone several transformations in the last five decades, with the main change taking place in the 1990s. This change influenced agriculture in the Czech Republic, inasmuch as the fledgling republic was preparing to join the European Union and adopt its policies. In ...

Much remains to be done before agricultural trade is as liberal as world trade in manufactures. But agriculture is distorted by more than agricultural policies. In developing countries especially, farming is discouraged not only by farm protection policies in high-income countries but also by those countries' own manufacturing policies and distortions to services markets. This paper explores th...