Modelling Economic Policy Reforms and Sustainable Land Use in Developing Countries: Key Issues

Four key issues emerge,from the models presented in this book,in quanting the effects of economic policy reforms on sustainable land use in developing countries: (1) conceptualisation of household objectives,market imperfections,agricultural production relationships,and sustainability,(2) specification of interactions between agricultural inputs,agricultural activities,spatially dispersed land units,household objectives,and economic agents,(3) method of aggregating micro-relationships to regional or higher levels,and (4) incorporation of a time dimension in the relationships. The way in which the various models presented in this volume incorporate these four key issues is reviewed. Based on this review,it is recommended that future quantitative research should concentrate on (1) incorporating the institutional environment of rural households,(2) testing the validity of basic assumptions,such as separability of household decision making,and/or the sensitivity of model outcomes to changes in these assumptions,and (3) addressing the aggregation bias in regional or higher-level models resulting from non-linear micro relationships and from off-site effects of soil erosion.