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Sustainable intensification measures imply implementing changes in farming systems to improve environmental outcomes without compromising economic outputs. In order to assess the achievement of these outcomes, the dissertation at hand investigates the role of farmers' decision-making with respect to the effective implementation of sustainable intensification measures. The dissertation consists of three empirical studies, each dealing with one aspect of the decision process. The first study focuses on sustainable intensification measures as the decision objects. A systematic literature review of 349 scientific publications builds the basis to develop a conceptual model of sustainable intensification, where four fields of action structure the portfolio of sustainable intensification measures. This conceptual model allows particularising local priority measures and regional measure portfolios in focus group discussions with stakeholders. The second study analyses farmers' decision rationales for these regional portfolios. An explorative approach based on multivariate probit and path modelling links farmers' positive experience with their sustainable intensification measures used to their intentions to broaden the portfolios with additional measures. Several complementary relationships in the use of sustainable intensification measures are established. The second and third study rest on farm survey data from the northern German Plain collected in 2017. The third study links adoption behaviour and decision outcomes by analysing eco-efficiency gains achieved by using agronomic sustainable intensification measures based on a theoretical model. Eco-efficiency is measured as the distance of current farm production to the production possibility frontier in the direction of the environmental outcome. Adopters show higher average eco-efficiency scores than a control group of matched non-adopters and determine a meta-frontier. However, most adopters do not fully exploit the ecological improvement potential of their farm. This dissertation shows the capacities of sustainable intensification measures for on-farm environmental improvement. The capacity for improvement depends on farmers' decisions on how effectively they apply sustainable intensification measures. Political intervention schemes and future research to support effective implementation and full exploitation of improvement potentials are discussed.

AbstractSustainable Intensification (SI) practices offer adopters exploiting improvement potentials in environmental performance of farming, i.e. enhance ecosystem functionality, while maintaining productivity. This paper proposes a directional meta-frontier approach for measuring farms' eco-efficiency and respective improvement potentials in the direction of farms' ecological output for SI evaluation. We account for farms' selection processes into SI using a behavioural model and rely on a matched sample for adopters and non-adopters of agronomic SI practices from the northern German Plain. We conclude that the SI adopters determined the sample's system frontier and showed higher mean eco-efficiency, but that most farms in our sample did not fully exploit the improvement potentials in biodiversity as ecological outcome.

AbstractMcCloskey and Ziliak analyzed two decades of econometric practice in the American Economic Review (AER). We review the arguments and develop a questionnaire, applying it to three Agricultural Economics journals and the AER. Statistical practice improved over time, but a greater focus on economic significance is still needed. Considering the power of tests and discussing the economic consequences of type I and type II error were rarely practiced. The AER and the American Journal of Agricultural Economics did not substantially differ in their performance. We discuss examples of statistical practice and conclude with implications for the publication process and teaching.

This report provides for the first time a detailed quantitative description based on survey data of those doctoral researchers who work and perform their research at one of the 91 Leibniz Institutes and Research Museums. In November 2017, the Leibniz PhD Network sent out invitations via PhD representatives and works councils to the doctoral researchers within the Leibniz Institutes and Leibniz Research Museums to participate in the survey's online questionnaire. The present report and the underlying survey are the products of a collaborative process within the Survey Working Group of the Leibniz PhD Network.