Retailers’ private standards are increasingly important in addressing consumer concerns about safety, quality and social and environmental issues. Empirical evidence shows that these private standards are frequently more stringent than their public counterparts. This article develops a...

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...

This paper develops a formal theory of the endogenous process of the introduction of high quality products in developing countries. Initial differences in income and capital and transaction costs are shown to affect the emergence of and the size of the high quality economy. Initial differences...

This paper presents a political economy model of public standards in an open economy model. We use the model to derive the political optimum and to analyze different factors that have an influence on this political equilibrium. The paper discusses how the level of development influences the...

This paper investigates the impact of the media on the allocation of humanitarian aid. We analyze the emergency assistance provided by four Belgian aid organizations to disasters that occurred from 2002 until 2004 and the media coverage of these disasters by two Belgian newspapers. We find a...

Consumers have increasing demands for product standards. This has important implications for development. This paper develops a formal theory of the process of the introduction of high product standards in developing countries. The model endogenizes the introduction of high standards. Initial...

We develop a model of policy communication by aid agencies, NGOs and intergovernmental organizations and we show how the need for fundraising affects the policy communication strategy of these organizations. To attract more funds, organizations may bias their communication. The bias depends on...

We study the political economy of instrument choice in agricultural and food policies. After a review of the historical evolution of European agricultural price and trade policy instruments since 1880, we develop a political economy model of instrument choice. The key predictions of the model...

There are major differences in regulation among various countries. A particular case is the difference between the EU and US in regulating biotechnology.We develop a formal and dynamic model of government decision-making on regulation. We show that minor differences in consumer preferences can...