Over fifteen years have elapsed since the transition from the centrally planned economic system started in the early 1990âs. During this time agricultural and rural areas of Central and Eastern Europe have undergone profound structural changes with wide variations in the degree of...

Since the seminal work of Adam Smith, markets have been considered an efficient tool for co-ordinating the behaviour of economic agents. The basic characteristic of a market economy is that the complex system of interaction among individuals is not centrally coordinated. Under the assumption of...

Land reform and farm restructuring have always been a major component of the transition from plan to market in all formerly socialist countries, and especially in the 12 former Soviet republics forming the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Ukraine, the second most populous country in CIS...

Croatia is very close to meeting the requirements necessary for becoming a member of the European Union (EU). On February 6, 2008, the European Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said that accession negotiations with Croatia are moving ahead well. As in all new member states (NMS), the...

The rise of a western-style middle class in many successful emerging economies like China currently is inducing deep structural changes on agricultural world markets and within the global agri-food business. As a result of both higher incomes and concerns over product safety and quality the...

On the verge of EU accession, Polandâs agricultural sector is characterised by a number of distinct structural weaknesses, which are a major reason for the unsatisfactory income situation of rural households. Among these weaknesses are that farm productivity is substantially below EU standards,...

The goal of this study is to assess householdsâ labor allocation in the wake of Chinaâs efforts to develop the rural labor market in a manner that is conductive to its transition to a market economy. Applying the agricultural household model as the theoretical framework, we help to understand...

Subsistence agriculture is probably the least understood and the most neglected type of agriculture. In a globalised, market-driven world, it remains at the same time a myth and a marginal phenomenon. Empirically, subsistence agriculture for a long time seemed to be restricted to developing...

The prevalence of non-monetary transactions (NMT) in the Ukrainian economy is a phenomenon attributable to its transition to a market system. Major types of NMT are barter transactions, offsets and payment in kind. Non-monetary transactions are widespread in agriculture. The aim of this research...

Although interest in the structure and relational features of social capital and its underlying networks has grown since the early 1990s, the terms do not embody any ideas that are really new to sociologists, but are indeed rather new to economists. Until the 1950s, land, labour, and financial...