The creation of optimal land institutions attracted renewed attention in the 1990s because of its central role in the transition process in former Communist countries in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and more recently because of large-scale land investments in developing countries....

Land regulations have a major impact on economic development, especially in agrarian societies, and they continue to affect the efficiency of the rural economy when economies further develop. This paper aims to give an overview of the regulations that are present in the land market in the EU...

This paper analyses the determinants of household farms?participation in land rental markets in transition countries and what affects their access to land through rental markets. We derive several theoretical hypotheses on the impact of households?management ability, land endowment, land quality...

This paper analyzes how imperfections of property rights affect allocation of assets and welfare, using micro-survey data from Bulgaria. Co-ownership of assets is widespread in many countries due to inheritance. Central and Eastern Europe offers an interesting natural experiment to assess the...

Transition countries provide a natural experiment to study the development of land markets. This paper provides survey-evidence of the variation in the development of land markets, identifies a series of patterns, and provides a set of hypotheses to explain these variations in land market...

Organic labels potentially play an important role in shaping consumer preferences for organic food products. Information implied by the presence of labels can be used by consumers to facilitate their consumption decisions. Therefore, we investigate the influence of the provision of objective...

The EU wine market is heavily regulated. Despite the many distortions in the wine market as a consequence, reforming the regulations has proven difficult. This paper analyses the political economy mechanism that created the existing set of wine regulations. We document the historical origins of...

Starting around 1996, Russia witnessed a strong growth in beer consumption, leading to a fivefold growth in average beer consumption and making beer the most important alcoholic drink today. We use survey data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to analyze individual...

As recently as a century ago, one out of two people in Europe was employed in the agricultural sector. Today agriculture represents only a small fraction of total employment in most EU member states. What makes this decline in agricultural employment even more striking is that this evolution has...