The disequilibrium of world agriculture has been worsening as manifested by increasing food deficit in developing economies in contrast with increasing surplus in developed economies. Underlying this disequilibrium are policies determined by the three different agricultural problems confronted by...

Developing countries have traditionally been antagonistic to the introduction of strengthened Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) systems. This is the case in spite of the obvious fact that virtually all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) market economies have...

The recent years have seen a resurgence of economic growth in Asia. The region's growth of roughly 5% achieved in 2003 came close to the level achieved prior to the East Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s. Remarkably, too, despite this crisis that led most countries in East Asia to either...

According to conventional wisdom, the ideal form of pro-poor economic development is through investment in agriculturally-led growth. In the early stages of growth, increased production decreases food prices and shifts out the demand for labor. Inasmuch as poor households disproportionately consume...

Freshwater is a finite resource that is being continuously exploited to meet the requirements of an increasing population. The estimated average available water per capita worldwide decreased from about 40,000 cubic meter (m3) in 1800 to 17,000 m3 in 1950, 12,900 m3 in 1970 and 7,000 m3 in 1997....

The expansion of the real output of major food and agricultural productions in China ranks as one of the nation's great achievements. Publicly funded agricultural research has been key to the impressive performance (Huang et al. 2003). Expenditures grew rapidly from the early 1960s to the middle...