The research published here constitutes a profound reflection on what is taking place in the world of agriculture at the threshold of the year 2000. The book attempts to go beyond a narrow sectoral analysis of the primary sector. It sets out to focus instead on the dynamic and innovative aspects of the agrotechnological system constituted by the complex interdependence of the agro-production, agro-food, agro-industrial and agro-ecological subsystems. The authors, internationally renowned scholars and scientists, tackle the most pressing contemporary economics issues from both a theoretical and policy-making standpoint. Three different lines of research are pursued concerning, first, the evolution and trends of world and European agricultural production, second, agricultural surplus formation and productivity dynamics in the economies of industrialized countries, and, lastly, the destination of agricultural outputs and land allotment under the impact of agro-bio-technologies.

Technology has long been seen as a path to economic growth. However there is considerable debate about the exact nature of this relationship. Economics of Structural and Technological Change employs a wide range of theoretical and applied approaches to explore the concept of technological change. The book begins with a series of in-depth discussions of the economic analysis of technological change. The second section contains a discussion of theoretical models of technological change, focusing on issues such as time and innovation. The third section brings together a number of applied analyses of technological change and examines the effect of factors such as human resource constraints, patenting and science and technology indicators.

Technological Trajectories and the Human Environment provides a surprising projection of a much greener planet, based on long-range analysis of trends in the efficient use of energy, materials, and land. The authors argue that we will decarbonize the global energy system and drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We will dematerialize the economy by leaner manufacturing, better product design, and smart use of materials. We will significantly increase land areas reserved for nature by conducting highly productive and environmentally friendly agriculture on less land than is used today, even as global population doubles. The book concludes that the technological opportunities before us offer the possibility of a vastly superior industrial ecology. Rich in both data and theory, the book offers fresh analyses essential for everyone in the environmental arena concerned with global change, sustainable development, and profitable investments in technology.

Rent, resources, and technologies are three crucial issues to the understanding of history and economics. The scarcity of resources, its interplay with technology, and the role of rent in explaining both economic growth and income distribution are investigated by adopting a multi-sectoral and non-proportional model, where scarce resources impose several scale constraints that may slow growth, but may contribute to further development of new technologies. In this dynamic framework the category of rent acquires new dimensions with far-reaching implications for both the system of prices and the distribution of income. The analytical and formal-theoretical perspective of this book could be used as a basis for future historical and quantitative studies.

Originally published in 1990, Agricultural Protectionism in the Industrialized World takes a detailed look into the domestic and international agricultural policies of the United States, Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. These areas are some of the most industrialised in the world and this study focuses on the benefits, policies and costs related to protectionism of their agriculture. These papers offer detailed analysis of the evolution, objections and domestic and international implications related to agriculture in specific countries as well as taking a global view of issues such as policy, trends and costs and concluding with a discussion on the effects of free trade. This title will be of interest to students of environmental studies.

General circulation models state that the central United States (and other mid-latitude continental regions) will become warmer and drier as the result of greenhouse warming. On this premise the dustbowl period of the 1930s was selected as an analogue of climate change and its weather records imposed on the Missouri--Iowa--Kansas region to assess how current agriculture, forestry, water resources and energy and the entire regional economy would be affected. The same climate was also imposed on a MINK region forty years into the future, by which time climate change may actually be felt, to assess whether technological and societal change would alter the region's vulnerability to climate change. Another premise of the study was that people would not suffer the impacts of climate change passively, but would use availabe tools to ease the stress. The rising atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, expected to be the major cause of greenhouse warming, also works to improve plant growth and reduce plant water use. So the effects of this `Co2 fertilization' were also considered in the analysis. The results, some of them surprising, of this first, fully-integrated analysis of climate change impacts and responses are reported in this book.