Since 2004 there has been a sharp decrease in border protection for the EU rice industry. Because the EU grants trade preferences to a considerable number of rice exporting developing countries, the reform implied preference erosion as well. By addressing the impact of preference erosion on...

This study analyzes the sensitivity of trade flows to trade barriers from gravity equations, using different econometric techniques recently highlighted in the literature. Specifically, we compare a benchmark OLS fixed effects specification a la Feenstra (2002) with three emerging estimation...

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/16/07.

The paper deals with the determinants of labour out-migration from agriculture across 149 EU regions over the 1990-2008 period. The central aim is to shed light on the role played by CAP payments on this important adjustment process. Using static and dynamic panel data estimators, we show that...

This paper examines the effect of the decoupling of farm direct payments upon the off-farm labour supply decisions of farmers in both Ireland and Italy. We use panel data from the Farm Business Survey (REA) and FADN database covering the period from 2002 to 2009 to model these decisions. Drawing...

This paper analyzes the extent to which the reduction of import tariffs – as a measure of import competition – affects the rate of quality upgrading in the agri-food sector. This relation is studied using highly disaggregated EU-15 import data from more than 70 countries in thousands of food...

This paper investigates the determinants of home bias in consumption in the beer and wine markets across 15 ‘old’ member states of the European Union (EU) during the period 2000-2009. Two main results are obtained using a theory-driven gravity equation. Firstly, the home bias in beer...

This paper uses the border effect estimate from a gravity model to assess the level of trade integration in agricultural markets between 22 OECD countries, over the 1995-2002 period. The empirical analysis shows that using a gravity equation derived from theory, in the estimation of the border...