A spatial price equilibrium model with a large coverage of countries, policies and regional trade arrangements is applied to simulate preferential sugar imports of the European Union (EU) in 2015/16 under different assumptions with respect to the expansion of the sugar sectors of various least...

In its Progress Report on Biofuels the European Commission proposes a more restrictive biofuel directive which sets a mandatory minimum share of biofuels in total fuel consumption in the transport sector of 10% per Member State by 2020. This is likely to have a strong impact on demand for...

The EU protects EU growers of 15 kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables against international competition not only by the means of ad valorem tariffs of up to 20%, but also by the EU entry-price system (EPS), which is designed to restrict imports below the product-specific, politically designated...

The persistency of EU policies supporting first generation biofuels despite the clearly emerging picture of ecological benefits of this policy being small or even negative, leads to the conclusion that this policy is driven by other objectives such as its distributional effects. Against this...

This paper presents a partial equilibrium simulation analysis of EU sugar market reforms with a version of the European Simulation Model (ESIM) addressing three issues: preferential EU imports are a function of the price differential between world market and EU price, EU supply functions are...

The EU applies a complex system of preferences for tomato imports from Morocco. Quantities are fixed and serve as entry price quotas and tariff rate quotas at the same time. This paper provides empirical evidence of i) the existence of an economic rent under the EU preferential scheme for tomato...

The EU recently completed negotiating a series of Association Agreements with Mediterranean countries. Trade preferences for agricultural goods granted under these Agreements, as well as under former arrangements, are analyzed by calculating the value of preference margins at several stages in...

This paper develops an analytical framework which structures the problem of whether, how and to what extent small producers in developing countries are disadvantaged by the increasing prevalence of food quality standards. Based on a literature review, the empirical evidence is structured and...

The impact of sectoral or economy wide policy scenarios is often of strong political and public interest, yet it is a scientific challenge. When analyzing different levels of aggregation, the use of single models may not be sufficient. In this paper we establish an interface between the European...