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Motivated by the increasing interest in sustainable agriculture and the potential benefits associated with organic certification, this study employs a multidimensional fixed-effects model to analyze data derived from onsite surveys conducted among 681 apple farmers in the Loess Plateau region of China to explore the influence of organic certification on absolute and relative agricultural product prices given online market access. The findings indicated a significant increase in apple prices among farmers who held organic certifications and engaged in online market sales, with prices rising by CNY1.60 per half kilogram. Additionally, this study highlights that the amalgamation of organic certification with online market access significantly enhances agricultural product prices by facilitating better dissemination of market information among farmers. Furthermore, this research addresses a critical gap in the existing literature by clarifying the differential impact of organic certification across distinct farmer demographics and geographical regions. The more pronounced positive impact of organic certification on prices observed among cooperative members and farmers in the low-altitude areas is particularly noteworthy. These results underscore the crucial role of online market access in achieving premium effects and price stability for organically certified products.

Indicators of agricultural production diversity and market access and/or participation have often been used to try to understand how agricultural production and markets influence dietary diversity of rural smallholder households. Based on a standardized search strategy, 37 studies investigating the association between an indicator of agricultural production diversity and any indicator of dietary diversity were reviewed. The characteristics of the indicators of agricultural production diversity, as well as indicators of market access and/or participation, were assessed. This review demonstrated the wide range of indicators; four types and 14 subtypes of indicators of agricultural production diversity were found in the 37 studies, and three types and 14 subtypes of indicators of market access and/or participation were found in 25 studies. While diversity of measurement ideas allows flexibility, it precludes comparability with other studies and might make it difficult to build a robust body of evidence of the impact of agriculture at farm household level on food security, diet, and nutrition.

Due to network effects and switching costs in platform markets, entrants generally must offer revolutionary functionality to win substantial market share. We explore a second entry path that does not rely upon Schumpeterian innovation: platform envelopment. Through envelopment, a provider in one platform market can enter another platform market, and combine its own functionality with that of the target in a multi-platform bundle that leverages shared user relationships. Envelopers capture market share by foreclosing an incumbent's access to users; in doing so, they harness the network effects that previously had protected the incumbent. We present a typology of envelopment attacks based on whether platform pairs are complements, weak substitutes, or functionally unrelated and we analyze conditions under which these attack types are likely to succeed.

Market size matters for innovation and hence for productivity. Improved access to foreign markets will thus encourage firms to simultaneously export and invest in raising productivity. We examine this insight using the responses of Canadian plants to the elimination of U.S. tariffs. Unique “plant-specific” tariff cuts serve as an instrument for changes in exporting. We find that Canadian plants that were induced by the tariff cuts to start exporting or to export more (a) increased their labor productivity, (b) engaged in more product innovation, and (c) had higher adoption rates for advanced manufacturing technologies. Further, these responses were heterogeneous.

A change in the pharmaceutical environment has occurred from previously only needing to convince regulators of a product's safety and efficacy to obtain marketing authorisation to now needing to satisfy the value perceptions of other stakeholders, including payers, to attain market access for products. There is thus the need to understand the concept of market access that may be defined as 'the process that ensures the development and commercial availability of pharmaceutical products with appropriate value propositions, leading to their prescribing and to successful uptake decisions by payers and patients, with the ultimate goal of achieving profitability and best patient outcomes'. The aim of this research therefore was to explore the understanding of market access among various stakeholders and how their understanding of this concept could improve patient access to pharmaceutical products. A literature review was conducted on MEDLINE by using the term 'market access' to find articles with explicit definitions of market access for pharmaceutical products; non-peer-reviewed and other grey literature sources were also examined. A paper-based interview survey was also conducted in three different settings. The respondents were asked about what factors they think contribute to the successful development of pharmaceutical products, as well as their definition of market access for these medicines. The peer-reviewed literature review did not reveal appropriate comprehensive definitions for market access, although several definitions were proposed from the non-peer-reviewed literature. These definitions ranged from basic to detailed. The survey of 110 respondents revealed differing levels of understanding of market access. Factors considered to influence successful market access, as described by the respondents, included unmet need/burden of disease (68.2%), clinical efficacy (47.3%), comparator choice (36.4%), safety profile (36.4%), and price (35.5%). The concept of market access is still poorly understood, and the definition varies depending on the stakeholders' perspectives. For cost-effective products to be developed and made accessible to patients, there is a need for wider understanding of market access and the value perspectives of the various stakeholders. There is also a need to determine whether and how involved payers should be in the development of pharmaceutical products.

Sub-Saharan Africa's (SSA) physical geography is often blamed for its poor economic performance. A country's geographical location does, however, not only determine its agricultural conditions or disease environment. It also pins down a country's relative position vis-à-vis other countries, affecting its ease of access to foreign markets. This paper assesses the importance of market access for manufactures in explaining the observed income differences between SSA countries over the period 1993–2009. We construct yearly, theory-based measures of each SSA country's market access using the information contained in bilateral manufacturing trade flows. Using these measures, we find a robust positive effect of market access on economic development that has increased in importance during the last decade. Interestingly, when further unraveling this finding, access to other SSA markets in particular turns out to be important.

Livelihood diversification is an essential strategy for managing economic and environmental shocks and reducing rural poverty in developing countries. This article presents a comprehensive two-part literature review on livelihood capital and livelihood diversification strategies. Firstly, it identifies the role of livelihood capital in determining livelihood diversification strategies, and secondly, it assesses the role of livelihood diversification strategies in reducing rural poverty in developing countries. Evidence suggests that human, natural, and financial capitals are the primary determining assets of livelihood diversification strategies. However, the role of social and physical capital with livelihood diversification has not widely been studied. Education, farming experience, family size, land holding size, access to formal credit, access to market, and membership in village organizations were the major influencing factors in the adoption process of livelihood diversification strategies. The contribution of livelihood diversification in poverty reduction (SDG-1) was realized through improved food security and nutrition, increased income level, sustainability of crop production, and mitigating climatic vulnerabilities. This study suggests enhanced livelihood diversification through improved access to and availability of livelihood assets is vital in reducing rural poverty in developing countries.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already proven its impact on medical practice and science. With the increasing generation of healthcare data, AI applications offer enormous potential in clinical and regulatory decision-making, public health and administration, as well as in research and development. We conducted a scoping literature review to identify publications that discuss potential AI-based technologies for identifying repurposing-eligible medicines and for improving access to innovative therapies. More than half of the articles (18/26, 69%) were published in 2020 and 2021, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and focused on developing AI-based algorithms to accelerate screening for medicines that could be potentially repurposed. These algorithms proved to be a powerful tool to save resources and time during the pandemic, fulfil unmet medical needs and facilitate faster access to innovations. Most articles aimed to provide the scientific community and researchers with a strong rationale and/or support for the application of AI-based tools in the process of drug repurposing. However, more studies need to be performed, as currently, AI-based tools for drug repurposing need further verification.

Over the last decades, the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the conventional agri-food system has and continues to be contested within both academic and public institutions. For small farms, the unsustainability of the food system is even more serious; farms’ declining share of profit and the cost-price squeeze of commodity production has increased barriers to market access with the inevitable effect of agricultural abandonment. One way forward to respond to the existing conventional agri-food systems and to create a competitive or survival strategy for small family farms is the re-construction of regional and local agri-food systems, aligning with Kramer and Porter’s concept of shared value strategy. Through a critical literature review, this paper presents “regional and local food hubs” as innovative organizational arrangements capable of bridging structural holes in the agri-food markets between small producers and the consumers—individuals and families as well as big buyers. Food hubs respond to a supply chain (or supply network) organizational strategy aiming at re-territorialising the agri-food systems through the construction of what in the economic literature are defined as values-based food supply chains.

Most food in sub-Saharan Africa is produced on small farms. Using large datasets from household surveys conducted across many countries, we find that the majority of farms are less than 1 ha, much smaller than previous estimates. Farms are larger in farming systems in drier climates. Through a detailed analysis of food self-sufficiency, food and nutrition security, and income among households from divergent farming systems in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda, we reveal marked contrasts in food security and household incomes. In the south of Mali, where cotton is an important cash crop, almost all households are food secure, and almost half earn a living income. Yet, in a similar agroecological environment in northern Ghana, only 10% of households are food secure and none earn a living income. Surprisingly, the extent of food insecurity and poverty is almost as great in densely-populated locations in the Ethiopian and Tanzanian highlands that are characterised by much better soils and two cropping seasons a year. Where populations are less dense, such as in South-west Uganda, a larger proportion of the households are food self-sufficient and poverty is less prevalent. In densely-populated Central Malawi, a combination of a single cropping season a year and small farms results in a strong incidence of food insecurity and poverty. These examples reveal a strong interplay between population density, farm size, market access, and agroecological potential on food security and household incomes. Within each location, farm size is a major determinant of food self-sufficiency and a household’s ability to rise above the living income threshold. Closing yield gaps strongly increases the proportion of households that are food self-sufficient. Yet in four of the locations (Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ghana and Malawi), land is so constraining that only 42–53% of households achieve food self-sufficiency, and even when yield gaps are closed only a small proportion of households can achieve a living income. While farming remains of central importance to household food security and income, our results help to explain why off-farm employment is a must for many. We discuss these results in relation to sub-Saharan Africa’s increasing population, likely agricultural expansion, and agriculture’s role in future economic development.