Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy has entailed the substitution of new income support instruments for the former price based instruments, mainly in the cash crop sector. Our first point is that the domestic political balance was unable to generate such a large change in policy design, in...

This paper explores the emergence of large current account imbalances in a few large countries, the factors behind the emergence, the role of those imbalances in the financial crisis of 2008-09, and the implications of achieving global balance. Imbalances reflect a country’s net savings and...

While economic growth has lifted more people from poverty than in any prior period, world market shocks of the 1970s and 1980s have caused a massive realignment in country policies, and future growth in population and income are expected to place heavy burdens on world resources. Recently, it...

The present paper consists of two main parts. The first one gives a picture of the more recent development of the farmland market in selected EC countries since 1985/86. Two main indicators are used to make relatively comparable the observed trends concerning: i) land mobility, ii) farmland...

The objective of this paper is to systematically incorporate lobbying in a microeconomic model of the profit maximizing farmer, derive testable implications of the model and apply it to establish the link, or lack thereof, between policy benefits transferred to farmers and their lobbying...