This paper aims to provide empirical evidence relating to the importance of contract enforcement for development. Survey data on Hungarian farms are used to estimate the impact of contract hold-ups on investment. We find that investment is affected by a variety of factors. Contract breaches in...

This paper gives an overview of the recent developments in the field of the political economy and its applications to agricultural policies. It highlights the interaction between economic and political markets, political preferences, the influence of lobbying groups, voters and politicians, and...

Endogenous policy theory is used to explain developments in agricultural and trade policies in Central Europe (CE). There have been three phases since 1989. After the initial liberalisation, ad hoc interventions emerged to protect consumers and producers against the negative real income effects...

Few years ago, the widely shared view was that low food prices were a curse to developing countries. The dramatic increase in food prices in 2006-2008 appears to have fundamentally altered this view. The vast majority of analyses and reports in 2008 and 2009 state that high food prices have a...

There is no consensus about how globalisation – trade and foreign investments – affects poverty reduction. Using household survey data, this study contributes to the empirical literature on globalisation and poverty by analysing the household-level implications of increased foreign...

We develop a formal model of EU decision-making on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The model is used to evaluate under what conditions CAP reform occurs and what the influence of the European Commission (Commission) is on CAP reform. We find that the voting and amendment rules in the...

Static political economy studies show that under-investment in public research may result because of income distributional effects--which induce opposition from groups adversely affected--and that compensation policies can mitigate opposition to public research. This paper explores the...

The transition from a centrally planned to a more market-oriented economy provides a natural experiment on the role of institutions and exchange in economic development, and more specifically on firm growth. This paper uses survey data from Bulgaria to analyse the impact of exchange problems and...

This paper uses a political economy model which integrates risk to analyse whether the nature of public food standards [food safety standards, food quality standards, and social and environmental standards] affects the politically optimal level of the standard and the likelihood of trade...