While development economists have, in recent years, become frontrunners in employing experimental approaches such as randomized controlled trials （RCTs） and quasi-experiments in their research, criticism still remains regarding the external validity and unclear economic mechanisms behind the causal relationships identified with such experimental methods, among others. We conduct a systematic review of the 422 experimental articles among the 1,497 articles published in four development economics journals during 2010, 2013, and from January 2016 to March 2018 to examine whether the existing literature has attempted to overcome these criticisms. We find that the topics covered in the experimental papers have expanded and more objective measurements are used for outcome variables. However, issues regarding the methods’ external validity and the unclear mechanism behind causal relationships identified still remain to be resolved. We conclude by noting the importance of establishing clear guidelines for implementing RCTs and making the experimental data, designs, and results public.

With the background of needing to increase the interest of urban residents in agriculture, some areas have established the Rural Working Holiday program as an alternative to filling in the labor demand during the agricultural season. Besides providing opportunities for urban residents to experience farm work and life in rural areas, joining the Rural Working Holiday has also played an important role for participants, especially for those who wish to start a new farm business, to connect with their host farmers who could further help them to determine their motivation, find farming areas, give advice on how to start the farm business as well as support them as new entrants to adapt to the rural community. Moreover, the case studied in this paper showed that an area named Iida City in Nagano Prefecture has formed a New Entrants Reproduction Structure where through the Rural Working Holiday, new farmers who were once the participants of the program become the host farmers for other participants who also wish to start farming in the future. Thus, this paper clarified that the role of Rural Working Holiday is not only to create rural-urban exchange activities, but can also be a method to continually introduce a number of new entrants to agriculture.

This study aims to clarify existing conditions of rural community business from the viewpoint of the demand side, with a case study of Magoyasai Co., Ltd. (hereinafter, the M company), which conducts vegetables sales via the Internet, in Akitakata City, Hiroshima Prefecture, with survey research by questionnaire for customer restaurants. The M company sells fresh vegetable to the restaurants in Hiroshima City with internet, corroborating with small-scale farmers who cultivate in the area less than 10 km far from the M company. According to the result of the questionnaire survey, for their existence, rural community businesses have to have a concept given a story line, fresh and safe food that is suitable for various customers' needs and human resources that have high communication skills.

The purpose of this research is to clarify the change in the production technology and economic characteristics of four major field crops. For wheat, these changes are shown to result in labor savings but lower income, whereas income from potatoes increases. In addition, soybeans and red beans, which are profitable, have higher returns in terms of income than kidney beans, which are considered nonprofitable. By using crop rotation, farmers determine which crops will generate a stable income.

This study aims to discover how Vietnamese international worker dispatching companies, known as sending agencies, have sent young Vietnamese workers as "Foreign Intern Technical Trainees" to Japan. According to the result of the interviews for four sending agencies in Hanoi City, they especially pay attencion to low-sending-fees, no more than 3,600 USD, sustaining resident officers and interpreters in Japan. This study also found the features of the Vietnamese sending style ; for example, they screen and educate applicants prior to the selection by Japanese supervising organizations and implementing organizations.

This study explores the trend of food and beverage trade in East Asia, employing the gravity equation and trade intensity analysis. Important findings are as follows : (1) The distance between countries and size of their economies have influenced bilateral trades as the gravity theory suggests, while significant relations were not estimated regarding capital intensity ; (2) South Korea, China and Taiwan have strengthened their trade intensity with East Asian countries ; and (3) The short-term trade barriers of high-income countries have decreased since the year 2000. In the case of Korea, it has successfully promoted food export in East Asia.

The purpose of this study is to investigate preferences of Chinese consumers for general foodstuffs with different country of origin labels. The study used best-worst scaling for a country of origin labeling experiment. The count result revealed that preferences for the country of origin label of Australia, Canada, the USA and France were positive, and that of Japan, China, Thailand, Brazil and Vietnam were negative. Random parameters logit estimate demonstrated that the experience of visiting Japan, and higher income led to positive interactions with the Japanese label. On the other hand, the experience of visiting Japan, higher income, and food safety awareness resulted in negative interactions with the Chinese label.

Under the Invasive Alien Species Act, tomato producers in Japan are required to prevent the diffusion of non-native bumblebees in the environment. Because of the lack of the government staff, it is necessary for those producers to organize themselves to monitor mutually the management of the bees. Based on questionnaires, this paper examines how tomato producers recognize the feasibility of such mutual monitoring. The paper shows that mutual monitoring is endorsed by those producers who are interested in the harmful influence of the bees on ecosystems or recognize that there are differences in their efforts to prevent the escape of the bees.

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of environmental policy in agriculture on farmers' conservation behavior using a laboratory experimet. The main results are as follows. First, the subsidy for conservation has continuous effects on conservation behavior, while the conservation effects depend on the amount of the subsidy. Second, the non-monetary support system has significant effect on conservation behavior in the early periods of the experiment. However, without compensation, most farmers stop the conservation activities in later periods. Experimental results suggest that the non-monetary support system has an equal effect to the payment of 14,404 yen per 10a.

Farmland transactions often cause dispersion of land parcels. This paper analyzes the process of farm size increasing, by focusing on social relationships and the dispersion rate of parcels, through investigation of a large rice farm in Kojo and GIS analysis on his paddy fields to answer the research questions : (1) How does the farm coordinate parcels to deal with dispersion? By returning the parcels of far distance to landowners after finding the successor farmer, through his own coordination, (2) How can these practices contribute to resolving parcel dispersion? With their large positive impacts on dispersion rates, i.e. leading to increase farm size without expanding dispersion rates in the long run.

Impact of tariff elimination on food is a prime concern for domestic suppliers in Japan. The standard method to calculate the impact is CGE analysis using the GTAP model. In the GTAP model, however, the demand-side elasticity of substitution follows the "Rule of Two", so that the value of the elasticity between domestic and foreign varieties ("macro" elasticity) is half of that among foreign varieties ("micro" elasticity). Econometric estimation is required since it plays an important role in the simulation analysis applied to trade policy. With due consideration to the above, the purpose of this study is to estimate "micro" and "macro" elasticities using Feenstra et al.'s method. The estimation results reveal that the estimated elasticities econometrically tend to be different from those of the GTAP value.

A new supplementary processed food product for infants has been launched in Ghana recently. We conduct a sales experiment with nutritional education and estimate its demand assuming a two-stage decision structure. The results are as follows. First, the effects of budget constraints (price and income) on the demand are observed only in the second stage (how much to buy), but not in the first stage (whether to buy), implying that there exist some households whose purchasing behavior is not influenced by price. Second, the provision of nutritional information increases purchase frequency, even if it does not include any advertisements.

The objective of this study is to explore the effect of maternal labor force participation in a non-agricultural sector on child health (as measured by height for age and weight for age z-scores), by focusing on rural Cambodia. From the estimation results of panel data analysis, we found that maternal work in a non-agricultural sector has a significantly positive effect on child height and weight. In addition, if the mother is working as a garment/shoe factory worker, her child is more likely to have good nutrition.

The objective of this study is to consider whether the purpose of agricultural structure policy in France has reached its limit. This French policy was designed in the 1960s to maintain and modernize the family farm of medium size. But under the background of growing exigencies of international competition, the policy is considered to be out of date. We have surveyed the preceding studies of the French National Research Program (ANR : Agrifirme 2011-2013), and conclude that the time has come to review the appropriateness of the structural policy to develop the succession of farming.

This paper examines why enriched cage (ERC) eggs have become available in retail markets of Taiwan. ERC eggs are not sold in the stores of the United States. However, in Taiwan, the characteristics of animal-friendly (AF) eggs (e.g. ERC, barn, free-range, and organic) are not priced according to the production methods. The traditional market eggs face problems related to safety and hygiene. Price differences exist between traditional market eggs and those sold in supermarkets. Additionally, there is a difference between normal-temperature and cold-storage eggs. However, these differences could not be distinguished among AF eggs. Barn and free-range eggs could not stabilize their position in supermarkets because ERC eggs are now available in Taiwan markets.

The objective of this study is to clarify the present situation and trend in the management of horse-breeding farms in the Hidaka region. As a method, we carried out questionnaire surveys with 12 farms and referred to the statistical data. As the results, approximately 70% of farms have fewer than 10 broodmares due to managerial difficulties and the absence of successors. These problems induce give-up-farming. Moreover, we discovered the new management type of these farms with more appropriate classification than previous studies from the results of our questionnaire surveys.