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Farm businesses in England are under pressure to intensify production sustainably while managing costs and meeting market demands. Commodity prices and support from Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payments are important determinants of profitability. With the United Kingdom (UK) leaving the European Union (EU), revised policy will see farming more exposed to fluctuating commodity prices and financial support from Government more focused on encouraging environmental land management. The research reported here, investigated whether business management practices of farmers influences financial performance, and how policy could be tailored to better meet the needs of farm businesses.

Regression models were estimated for 862 Cereals, Dairy and Livestock farms in England using official data for 2011–2012, in order to assess whether different farm characteristics, business management practices (identified from a systematic review of 102 studies), knowledge acquisition indicators and manager experience had an effect on four different financial performance ratios. The financial performance of the top 25% of the sample was also compared to the bottom 25% in terms of use of business management practices.

The results show that business planning and benchmarking had a positive, statistically significant, effect on financial performance, as do business size and knowledge acquisition, albeit to a lesser extent.

The research reported here is the most extensive examination, to date, of the impact of management practices on the financial performance of farms. Thus, it sends strong policy recommendations.

With more cities aiming to achieve climate neutrality, identifying the funding to support these plans is essential. The purpose of this paper is to exploit the present of a structured green bonds framework in Sweden to investigate the typology of abatement projects Swedish municipalities invested in and understand their effectiveness.

Marginal abatement cost curves of the green bond measures are constructed by using the financial and abatement data provided by municipalities on an annual basis.

The results highlight the economic competitiveness of clean energy production, measured in abatement potential per unit of currency, even when compared to other emerging technologies that have attracted the interest of policymakers. A comparison with previous studies on the cost efficiency of carbon capture storage reveals that clean energy projects, especially wind energy production, can contribute to the reduction of emissions in a more efficient way. The Swedish carbon tax is a good incentive tool for investments in clean energy projects.

The improvement concerning previous applications is twofold: the authors expand the financial considerations to include the whole life-cycle costs, and the authors consider all the greenhouse gases. This research constitutes a prime in using financial and environmental data produced by local governments to assess the effectiveness of their environmental measures.