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Description:
The process of development is accompanied by urbanization through shifting labor from agriculture to the industrial and service sector. Thus, rural villages in developing countries, where most agriculture takes place, are often seen as a place unattractive for work and living. Especially younger people seek employment in the cities where they find better infrastructure and more leisure possibilities. Left behind in the villages are often the elderly and minors. Most of the development investments are made in urban agglomerates while villages are given lower priority. Hence, the role of rural villages is often underrated in developing countries and therefore some villages remain pockets of poverty. Considering the experience of many European countries with well-targeted rural development policies, villages can become modernized and they can become an attractive living place with low prices for land and a better environment than in polluted cities. Hence, there is a need to study the role that rural villages can play in economic development of an emerging market country like Thailand. Therefore, this thesis takes an in-depth look at the mechanism, constraints and opportunities that govern socioeconomic development of rural villages in Thailand. The dissertation contains four essays. Each essay deals with a different aspect of the development of rural villages. The first essay is based on panel data from a single village, and tests, by means of two econometric models, the standard assumption that out-migration is a driver for increase in welfare and reducing poverty in villages. The second paper, using the same village than in the first paper applies a mathematical programming model to investigate the future role of agriculture under two likely external economic scenarios. The third article takes a broader view, by using a sample of 220 villages in Northeast Thailand, and explores the factors that on the one hand, can facilitate transformation from backward to progressive rural villages and that on the other hand, ...