1,721,375 research outputs found
Exploring the role of interest rates, macroeconomic environment, agricultural cycle, and gender on loan demand in the agricultural sector: Evidence from Mali
No full textFormal credit plays an important role for the development of the agriculture sector in developing countries because many farmers are characterized as liquidity constrained. Access to credit can increase farmers' purchasing power for inputs and agricultural technology, thus raising the overall productivity. Farmers in Mali are particularly vulnerable to shocks, such as heavy precipitation events. Access to liquidity to increase the resilience of the agricultural sector is essential. Therefore, higher financing volumes are required, which make the analysis of loan demand in agriculture of interest. The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the role of the interest rate, the macroeconomic environment, the agricultural cycle and the gender of the farmer on the loan demand in the agricultural sector from a country in the Sahel. Unique and comprehensive loan data at the farm level, provided by a commercial Malian bank, is used for this analysis. The analysis covers the period from 2010 to 2020. Two different estimation strategies are combined. First, an ordinary least square regression is applied with the granted loan amount as the dependent variable. Second, the machine learning technique, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator, is applied to select the most relevant features to be used as explanatory variables in the estimation. The results reveal that the interest rate, the gross value added, the farmer's gender as well as the agricultural cycle have statistically significant effects on the granted loan demand in agriculture. These results are of interest to policymakers, who deal with financial inclusion as well as market failures, and agricultural financial institutions who could incorporate such information in the design of future loan products to stimulate farmers' loan demand, especially for female farmers
Testing the effectiveness of rewards or punishments with different probabilities as incentives in palm oil production
No full textPalm oil production creates negative externalities, e.g., through intensive fertiliser applica- tion. If policy wants to limit externalities, an effective, sustainable and efficient measure seems desira- ble. Embedded in a framed field experiment in Indonesia, we apply a business simulation game to test ex ante several incentives for reducing the use of fertiliser in palm oil production. These incentives are arranged in the form of different designs, i.e., either a reward or punishment, varying in their magni- tude and probability of occurrence but constant in the effect on expected income. Results show that participants react significantly different depending on the incentive design. A high reward with a low probability to occur has been found to be the most effective and sustainable incentive design. For effi- ciency, a low and certain reward is indicated to be the best design
An empirical identification of temptation goods: Perceptions of Cambodian smallholder farmers
No full textAverage Protein Content and Its Variability in Winter Wheat: A Forecast Model based on Weather Parameters
No full textEffects of Household Shocks on Risk Preferences and Loss Aversion: Evidence from Upland Smallholders of South East Asia
No full textFarmers’ Willingness to Accept Animal Welfare Practices: A Discrete Choice Experiment with German Pig Producers
No full textImproving the welfare of animals is an important aim in livestock farming. Thereby, farmers’ willingness to implement animal welfare practices directly influences the welfare of animals. Therefore, this paper investigates pig farmers’ preferences and willingness to accept the implementation of animal welfare practices. We study individual preferences for specific animal welfare measures that are part of a hypothetical animal welfare program. The data are analyzed with a mixed logit model in WTA space and show that German pig farmers require statistically significant compensations for implementing animal welfare practices. We find evidence that farmers’ choices are driven by their trust in the consumers’ willingness to pay, their evaluation of the efficiency of specific animal welfare practices and farm characteristics. Our results further reveal that accounting for farmers’ preferences aids in understanding their willingness to implement specific animal welfare practices. Regarding the improvement of animal welfare these findings are highly relevant for politicians, food industry and producers in order to support animal welfare program design and to identify the costs of welfare improvements on the meat supply chain and future profitability
Do decisions of Indonesian small-scale rubber farmers match?
No full textThis article compares the use of risk-increasing and risk-reducing production inputs with the experimentally measured risk attitudes of farmers. For this purpose, the Just-Pope production function indicates production inputs’ influence on output risk and a Holt-Laury lottery is used to measure the producers’ risk attitude. We test whether more risk averse farmers use more risk-reducing and less risk-increasing production inputs. Therefore, we apply a unique data set which includes 185 small-scale farmers which are producing rubber on 260 plots on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. The Just-Pope production function indicates that fertiliser usage has a risk-reducing effect, whereas herbicide usage and plot size have risk-increasing effects. For labour and plantation age, the influence on output risk is ambiguous. By including the outcome of a Holt- Laury lottery into the analysis, we found the expected result that more risk averse farmers use more (risk- reducing) fertiliser and less (risk-increasing) herbicides. These consistent results provide an example for the external validity of measuring risk attitude with the Holt-Laury lottery
Behavioral climate change: does thinking about future consequences of climate change affect risk preferences and cooperation?
No full textAbstract Human-made climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of the 21st century. This paper examines how thinking about future consequences of climate change influences decision-making. Using priming experiments, we address ambiguity preferences, risk preferences, and willingness to cooperate among farmers, students, and representatives of the general population of Germany. The results show that farmers (who were asked specifically about the consequences for their profession) – but not students or representatives of the general population – increase their investments in uncertain assets. There are also common patterns across the subject pools, most notably willingness to cooperate remains largely unchanged
Public Preferences for Pasture Landscapes and the Role of Scale Heterogeneity
No full textThe paper investigates the influence of different model specifications for interpreting the results of discrete choice experiments when investigating heterogeneous public landscape preferences. Comparing model specifications based on the Mixed Multinomial Logit and the Generalized Multinomial Logit Model reveals that the parameter estimates appear qualitatively comparable. Still, a more in-depth investigation of the conditional estimate distributions of the sample show that parameter interactions in the Generalized Multinomial Logit Model lead to different interpretations compared to the Mixed Multinomial Logit Model. This highlights the potential impact of common model specifications in the results in landscape preference studies.The paper investigates the influence of different model specifications for interpreting the results of discrete choice experiments when investigating heterogeneous public landscape preferences. Comparing model specifications based on the Mixed Multinomial Logit and the Generalized Multinomial Logit Model reveals that the parameter estimates appear qualitatively comparable. Still, a more in-depth investigation of the conditional estimate distributions of the sample show that parameter interactions in the Generalized Multinomial Logit Model lead to different interpretations compared to the Mixed Multinomial Logit Model. This highlights the potential impact of common model specifications in the results in landscape preference studies
I might be a liar, but I am not a thief: An experimental distinction between the moral costs of lying and stealing
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