a r t i c l e i n f o A good harvest usually leads to a collapse of agricultural prices since the price elasticity of agricultural products is relatively low. To stabilize the market and protect farmers, many countries have introduced a target zone policy, together with product purchasing or price subsidy strategies. This article analyzes the effect of a target zone with different strategies op...

Decomposing the occupational structure of rural and urban labor markets allows assessing whether these structures became more alike or more dissimilar between 1970 and 1990. A shift-share method is used to compute ‘predicted’ and ‘specialized’ shares for 9 inclusive occupations. A SUR model is used to estimate the convergence process. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Agricu...

We establish four necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of the Averch−Johnson effect in a generalized version of their famous model of the rate−of−return regulated firm. The four necessary and sufficient conditions are then compared to the two stronger sufficient conditions for the Averch−Johnson effect found in the literature. Our analysis also permits us to put to rest a somew...

Fractal scaling behavior of long-term records of daily runoff time series in 31 sub-watersheds covering a wide range of size were examined using the shifted box-counting method and Hurst rescaled range (R/S) analysis. These subwatersheds were associated with four agricultural watersheds of different climate and topography. The results showed that the records of daily runoff rate exhibited scale...

Xiaojun Wan,Gang Liu * Key Laboratory of Modern Precision Agriculture System Integration Research, China Agricultural University, P. O. Box125, Qinghuadonglu 17, Haidian District, Beijing, 100083, P. R. China * Corresponding author, Address: P. O. Box 125, China Agricultural University, Qinghua Donglu 17, Haidian District, Beijing, 100083, P. R. China, Tel:+86-10-62736741, Fax:+86-10-62736746, ...

We formulate and test a hypothesis for the dramatic restructuring that the plant breeding and seed industry has recently undergone: the reorganization can be explained in part by the desire to exploit complementarities between intellectual assets needed to create genetically modified organisms. This hypothesis is tested using data on agricultural biotechnology patents, notices for field tests o...

The study assessed interest of 649 agricultural science graduates in completing courses delivered by distance education. Graduates were surveyed by mail to I) determine their level of interest in completing courses offered by distance education, 2) compare the characteristics of graduates who are interested in distance education with those who are not, 3) examine factors that may influence thei...

Castor (Ricinus communis L.) is an important oilseed crop of dry land area with huge industrial importance. However, biotic stresses are becoming major bottleneck in yield improvement. In view change insect pest status current agricultural scenario and fluctuations climatic conditions will influence the incidence severity pests. Keeping this point studies on population relation to weather param...