This paper incorporates the interdisciplinary New Institutional Economics in a comprehensive framework for analyzing risk management in the agri-food sector. First, it specifies the diverse types of agri-food risks (natural, technical, behavioral, economic, policy, etc.) and the modes of their...

In this paper, we use semi-structured interviews with firm representatives and original survey data to study the factors influencing farmers' participation in modern supply chains in the Ecuadorian blackberry sector. Previous research has emphasized the important role of farm size and non-farm...

The mainly used welfare criterion in the social network literature is Bentham´s utilitarian concept. The shortcomings of this concept are well-known. We compare the outcomes of the utilitarian concept with the Nash social welfare function. By using a Taylor approximation we deduce a formula...

Based on a national representative survey conducted in 2009, this study shows that the decision-making within Farmer Professional Cooperatives (FPCs) in China is decentralized to individual farmers. However, there is a trend that the decision rights of farming are decomposed to marketing,...

While traders of agricultural products are known to often exercise market power, this power has rarely been quantified for developing countries. In order to derive a measure, we estimate the traders' revenue functions and calculate the Marginal Value Products directly from them. We subsequently...

There is an emerging body of literature analyzing how smallholder farmers in developing countries can be linked to modern supply chains. However, most of the available studies concentrate on farm and farmer characteristics, failing to capture details of institutional arrangements between farmers...

In emerging markets for high-value food products in developing countries, processing companies search for efficient ways to source raw material of consistent quality. One widely embraced approach is contract farming. But relatively little is known about the appropriate design of contracts,...

We study the effect of alleviating information asymmetry regarding product quality that is widespread in developing-country agricultural markets. Opportunistic buyers may underreport quality levels back to farmers to reduce the price they have to pay. In response, farmers may curb investment,...

Contract farming is a means to assist small growers in gaining market access and reducing price risk, and as such it has attracted attention from development agencies and governments in developing countries. This paper reviews literature related to contract farming in Thailand and adds updated...

The study presents findings from thirty cases of organic product European retailers and identifies the potential enablers of collaborative network development on this food industry niche market and the barriers that currently restrict its adoption at a large scale. In the present paper, using...