Biogas as a technology and the factors that affect its productivity have both been well studied. Research has previously been done to look at the impact of temperature, pH, organic loading rate, carbon-to-nitrogen ratios, microbial populations and hydraulic retention time on different scales of biogas operations. Small scale biogas installations, of which many millions have been constructed and seem to be performing well, have been chosen as the area of focus for this paper. Such systems allow energy generation on site, thereby eliminating the need for energy intensive transport.

Economic growth in industrialized countries over the past few decades did not result in improved subjective well-being (SWB) of citizens.

Rising prices of fossil fuels, together with apprehension about the environmental harm created by them, have resulted in increasing efforts to search for alternative energy sources such as biofuels. Biofuels production is still a debatable issue regarding the opportunities it creates and the challenges it poses.

In this paper, after a review of the evolution of the literature on climate change economics in agriculture, I present some evidence of the impact of different moments of the distribution of rainfall on farmers risk aversion.

It is found that while more rainfall is negatively associated with the probability of observing risk aversion, rainfall variability is positively correlated. This result highlights an important behavioural dimension of climatic factors.

This study investigates the impact of climate change adaptation on farm households’ downside risk exposure in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia. The analysis relies on a moment-based specification of the stochastic production function. We use an empirical strategy that accounts for the heterogeneity in the decision on whether to adapt or not, and for unobservable characteristics of farmers and their farm.