A concern when conducting stated preference valuation studies in rural developing or very low income contexts is the use of monetary willingness to pay (WTP) estimates. In circumstances where cash incomes are extremely low, a significant proportion of the population are not engaged in waged labour and the exchange of goods or services is augmented through barter or work exchange, the role of money is likely to be different from that within an urban developed setting. As such, ability to pay using money may be impaired and downwardly biased when compared with other mediums of exchange. In recognition of this several studies have used hypothetical labour contributions as payment vehicles and a common finding is that households are more often willing to contribute labour than they are money. In this paper we present the results of a split sample DCE using money and labour contributions as payment vehicles for improved drinking water quality in Kandal Province, Cambodia. We find little differences between the payment vehicles in terms of attribute non-attendance, marginal utilities of attributes or derived welfare values. We argue that this provides support for the use of WTP in rural developing areas where there are functioning labour markets.

A measure of relative producer performance is often useful for policy purposes and the concept of economic efficiency provides a theoretical basis for such a measure. Yet several authors argue that the concept of efficiency and conventional efficiency measures are meaningless for the evaluation of real‐world performance. This paper examines some of the issues and argues that producers' performance may be measured using the concept of technical efficiency. Alternative technical efficiency measures are examined including those of Timmer (1971) and Kopp (1981). A frontier production function is estimated for a cross‐section of North West farms and these two measures are computed under various assumptions on the fixity of agricultural inputs.

This paper explores the economic effects of biodiversity loss on marketable agricultural output for intensive agricultural systems, which require an increasing level of artificial capital inputs. A theoretical bio-economic model is used to derive a hypothesis about the effect of the state of biodiversity on the optimal crop output both in the longer run and in the transitional path towards the steady-state equilibrium. The hypothesised positive relationship between biodiversity stock and optimal levels of crop output is empirically tested using a stochastic production frontier approach, based on data from a panel of UK specialised cereal farms for the period 1989-2000. The results support the theoretical hypothesis. Increases in biodiversity can lead to a continual outward shift in the output frontier (although at a decreasing rate), controlling for the relevant set of labour and capital inputs. Agricultural transition towards biodiversity conservation may be consistent with an increase in crop output in already biodiversity-poor modern agricultural landscapes. Copyright 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Pakistan's stated policy is to increase basmati rice production through price support measures and liberalization of input markets. The present study assesses the scope for price support policy to achieve growth targets and whether additional assistance is needed from non-price policy measures. The econometric analysis is based on a profit function using farm household survey data from the Punjab. Pakistan for 1995-1996. The results reveal that to achieve production targets, very high support prices are required. Since these price levels may not be feasible, a more appropriate option may involve some inducements to expand paddy area and the area allocated to modern varieties. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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