This study investigates the rebound effect in agriculture resulting from increased technical efficiency. In a palm oil smallholder case study, we find that although net land savings prevail as a result of increased technical efficiency, expected land savings are offset by about half due to farmland expansion.

We ask whether the level of cognitive function can help to explain the differences in economic performance of the poor. Our findings suggest that impeded cognitive function results in a negative economic performance feedback loop, which can be a reason why some farmers appear to be stuck in poverty while others manage to escape it.

Here we investigate the effects of the variable corn import levy of the EU on domestic and foreign price volatility. We find that the variable import levy reduced corn price volatility in the EU market, while significantly increasing volatility to the same extent in Argentina.

We present the R package svars which implements statistical identification techniques for Structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models. The package offers both heteroskedasticity based and independence based techniques. Moreover, it includes a rich variety of analysis tools that are well known in the SVAR literature.

In this paper we use structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models to investigate the impacts of global oil market shocks on local corn prices in several SSA countries. Our key findings are that unlike US or global corn markets, African corn markets are much less sensitive to the impacts of oil-specific demand shocks, instead, disruptions in global oil supply can lead to an increase in food prices in several markets.