The story of agriculture in Eastern Europe during the last quarter century is a story of policy driven by politics, rather than by sound economics. Even in the highly distorted economics of the socialist period, agricultural policy stands out as being singularly colored by ideological...

We evaluate the importance of the competitiveness and productive efficiency of the food processing sector for predicting policy outcomes, and the sector's performance under selected government interventions. Our model is based on firm-level decisions and focuses explicitly on the effects of...

Contracting and other forms of vertical coordination are important parts of the supply chains for many agricultural products. Often the buyer cares about multiple product attributes affected by a grower's actions. Using data that are insulated from common methodological problems, we test whether...

Privatization and market liberalization are widely considered to be complementary reforms in transition economies. This paper challenges this view and the closely related "big bang" approach to economic reform. Our analysis suggests that when pursued simultaneously, privatization may actually...

Recent theoretical work on agricultural contracts has utilized agency theory. Most of this work considers a moral hazard problem, and assumes that producers are homogeneous, so that there is no adverse selection problem. We utilize a sample of producer performance under a broiler production...

Privatization and market liberalization are widely considered to be complementary reforms in transition economies. This paper challenges this view and closely related "big bang" approach to economic reform. Our analysis suggests that when pursued too vigorously, privatization may actually impede...