This paper investigates the flexibility of the Polish farming sector during a transition period. Flexibility is considered to be a farm’s ability to change output by sustaining average costs. We argue that flexibility is a crucial factor in farmers’ competitive advantage, especially under...

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...

This paper deals with the estimation of a random coefficient model. The virtue of this approach is that it considers firm heterogeneity, which conventional SFA models do not. When the model is applied to Polish farms, the results indicate that the conventional random and fixed effect models...

In this article we suggest that rising quality requirements are key factors for the redesign of food chains. We argue that the food supply proceeds through pyramidalhierarchical strategic networks coordinated by powerful focal firms. These firms choose a quality strategy and employ chain quality...