Access to credit is essential for sustainable agricultural development. This paper evaluates the impact of formal and informal credit, access extension services, different combinations services on economic outcomes farming households in Afghanistan. study applies a quasi-experimental approach (propensity score matching) inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) analysis. The da...

This paper considers the web service environment for Telco applications, as defined recently by the ParlayX Working Group within the Parlay organisation. These services include messaging, location, payment, call control, presence, group management, etc. and open the way to rapid service creation and integration with internet applications. However, some vital issues for the telecommunications in...

There is growing global interest in better leveraging Agricultural Extension Services (AES) as a foundation for food and nutrition security. Pluralistic AES (defined in Box 1) consist of rural, agriculturally focused extension and advisory services implemented by public, NGO, and private-sector entities. They reach millions of farmers and represent largely untapped potential for influencing pro...

Jini is a technology for building reliable, fault-tolerant distributed applications. Besides offering an infrastructure for clients to locate services, it introduces the concept of leasing. Leases model time-constrained access granting and are used for distributed garbage collection. In this position paper we propose an extension to the lease concept that allows associating costs with resource ...