Current thoughts on CAP changes, e.g. the "Health Check", emphasize the necessity to move away from payments based on historical receipts towards a "flatter rate" system. The aim of current research is to simulate the impact of a flat rate system (equal payments per hectare of cultivated land)...

To explain over- and underuse of available quota, Buysse et al. (2007) have integrated the shadow cost of the quota constraint in a quota flexibility function in a positive mathematical programming model. This method and central hypothesis, formulated and tested for the case of Belgian sugar...

In 2005, 30% of the Flemish farms faced a manure excess, while at aggregated level still 9.7% of the emission rights were unused. This means that, despite the various possibilities, Flemish farmers do not succeed in an effective exchange of manure between farms. In current paper is shown how...

There is a high potential for simultaneously increasing sustainability of the earth system and economic development by removing inefficiencies currently present both at the production input and output side. In this paper a static view on sustainability is employed, by introducing capacity...

In South Africa water law has recently changed, adopting the principle of water as an economic good, thus levying charges on its use. For small-scale irrigators this is an important change, because currently their water use is entirely subsidized. In the coming years, subsidies will gradually...

The paper discusses an ex ante evaluation of the derogation on the Nitrates Directive for Flanders, Belgium, which is a case of intensive but highly productive livestock areas. The aim is to develop an accurate simulation model to detect small differences in manure surpluses caused by changes of...

We apply a spatial price equilibrium model of the world sugar market to simulate an abolishment of the EU quota system in 2015/16. To overcome the normative nature of the approach, we calibrate the model by attaching a non-linear cost term to each trade flow. This is in some regards similar to...

The paper analyses the governance choices in production quota with the Flemish nutrient production rights as a case. A static model of quota trade in the short run shows the inefficiency of discrete non-auctioned trade with fixed transaction costs. This model also shows that an obligation to...

An agricultural sector model for ex ante policy analysis is developed and applied for the simulation of alternative implementations of the Agenda 2000 Mid Term Review (MTR). The model uses an adapted version of Positive Mathematical Programming allowing simultaneous modelling of individual...