This paper presents a general political economy model of standards. We use the model to derive political and social optima of nutrition and health standards in food markets, and to identify under which cases “understandardization” or “over-standardization” will result. The paper analyses...

The material contained herein is supplementary to the article named in the title and published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Volume 88, Number 4, November 2006.

We analyze the impact of assistance programs offered by food processors to supplying farms based on an original survey of dairy farms and companies in Poland. The results show that these programs have had a significant impact at the farm level: on on-farm investments; product quality; and farm...

Like all markets in the former communist countries, the Eastern European beer market has been strongly affected by the economic reforms in the beginning of the 1990s. In the first years after reforms, there was a substantial decline in the production of barley, malt and beer. However, the...

There is no consensus about how globalization –trade and foreign investments – affects poverty reduction. Using household survey data, this study contributes to the empirical literature on globalization and poverty by analyzing the household-level implications of increased foreign...

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...

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...

The 2003 reform of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) under Commissioner Fischler was the most radical in the history of the CAP. This paper analyzes the causes and constraints of the 2003 reform. The paper argues that an unusual combination of pro-reform factors such as...

Agricultural employment in industrialized countries has been steadily decreasing despite important levels of farm subsidies. We argue that one explanation to this puzzle is the positive impact of subsidies on the education levels of farmers’ children. If farmers are credit constrained, they...

In this paper, we describe the regulations governing the rental markets for agricultural land in selected EU member states and candidate countries. The analysis focuses on various kinds of regulations and institutions connected with the land rental market, including price, tenancy duration,...