ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the rationality behind decision-making with respect to livestock farming from a micro-economic perspective. As the rural household is the most important type of economic organisation involved in livestock farming, the first section of this chapter will deal with the rationality behind decision-making in the household as it can be derived from the analytical concepts of neo-classical economics. The second section of this chapter will explore the capacity of the New Institutional Economics (NIE) for analysing decision-making with respect to livestock farming.
