Why agricultural insurance may slow down agricultural development

Why does diversification slow down?

Studies of phylogenetic diversification often show evidence for slowdowns in diversification rates over the history of clades. Recent studies seeking biological explanations for this pattern have emphasized the role of niche differentiation, as in hypotheses of adaptive radiation and ecological limits to diversity. Yet many other biological explanations might underlie diversification slowdowns....

Agricultural Insurance in India Problems and Prospects

Population and Agricultural Development

Thinking about population as a driver of agricultural development provides insights into induced technical and institutional change, whether it be Esther Boserup’s declining fallow period, modern crop varieties, or the specialization pyramid that arises in laborintensive agriculture. The non-convexities of research and development, infrastructure investments, and specialization imply that modes...

Agricultural Research Magazine, May-June 2013

PPP May not Hold for Agricultural Commodities

We use the well known USDA dataset of real exchange rates to address the question of whether PPP holds for agricultural commodities. Both unit root tests and the recently proposed more powerful class of panel unit root tests, which take into account cross-section correlation across the units in the panel, are used. Properties of unit roots and panel tests are analyzed by Monte Carlo simulation....