Rural America’s real estate market has remained strong during the recession. While there is no comprehensive statistic to summarize the overall market for rural real estate, a variety of indicators indicate healthy demand. Farmland values rose throughout the year. Rural housing activity remained robust in the face of an economic downturn. Suburban growth and the increasing use of rural areas as...

One of the objectives of agricultural development in Botswana is the increase of agricultural productivity in both arable and livestock production in order to increase farm incomes and thus help to make agriculture a sustainable activity. This paper looks at the challenges that Botswana faces in meeting this objective while minimizing any land degradation that may accompany the process of incre...

internal audit is a process affected by an entity ‘s board of directors, management and other personnel, designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the achievement of objectives relating to operations, reporting and compliance. this definition reflects certain fundamental concepts. internal control is: • geared to achievement of objectives in one or more categories operations, repor...

Multi-agent systems (MAS) open new modelling and analysis perspectives in ecological and social sciences. An original characteristic of the Companion Modelling (ComMod) approach adopted in this case study is the co-construction and use of a MAS model with and for local stakeholders such as farmers and local administrators. Alternating iteratively field and modelling activities, this approach fa...

BACKGROUND Cancer and chronic disease are leading causes of death in the US with an estimated cost of $46 billion. METHODS We analyzed 11 million cause-specific deaths of US workers age 18-64 years in 30 states during 1985-1999, 2003-2004, and 2007 by occupation, industry, race, gender, and Hispanic origin. RESULTS The highest significantly elevated proportionate leukemia mortality was obse...

The main purpose of this study is to examine the responsiveness of peasant farmers to changes in price and non-price factors. To this end, quadratic production and restricted profit functions are fitted to farm-level survey data from Ethiopia. The results indicate that farmers respond significantly to price incentives, but the effect of prices on output supply and fertilizer demand is negligibl...

Panel data from villages in rural south India have been used for leading econometric studies on risk-sharing in village economies. The work has influenced debate on safety net design world-wide and has driven scholarly agendas on household economics. This paper critically surveys work to date and provides new results. The data show that statecontingent transfers between households can in princi...

This paper uses household panel data from rural Vietnam to explore the effects of having a relative in a position of political or bureaucratic power on farmers’ agricultural investment decisions. Our main result is that households significantly increase their investment in land improvement as a result of relatives moving into public office. Connections to office holders appear to be important f...

Panel data from villages in rural south India have been used for leading econometric studies on risk-sharing in village economies. The work has influenced debate on safety net design world-wide and has driven scholarly agendas on household economics. This paper critically surveys work to date and provides new results. The data show that statecontingent transfers between households can in princi...