Over fifteen years have elapsed since the transition from the centrally planned economic system started in the early 1990âs. During this time agricultural and rural areas of Central and Eastern Europe have undergone profound structural changes with wide variations in the degree of...

Since the late 1980s, agriculture in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) has been under considerable adjustment pressure due to changing political, economic and institutional environments. These changes have been linked to the transition process, as well as the ongoing integration...

The aim of this paper is to present an analysis of farm-level data collected in a survey of 464 Polish farms in 2000. Performance indicators of farms in three Polish voivodships are compared with farm accountancy data from two German Länder. The results show that Polish farms were much less...

Since the seminal work of Adam Smith, markets have been considered an efficient tool for co-ordinating the behaviour of economic agents. The basic characteristic of a market economy is that the complex system of interaction among individuals is not centrally coordinated. Under the assumption of...

ABSTRACT Social capital is defined as the shared knowledge, trust, and culture, embodied in the structural forms of networks and other stable inter-agent relationships. Social capital has been shown to be more difficult to build than economic capital, and to have greater beneficial effects for...

Croatia is very close to meeting the requirements necessary for becoming a member of the European Union (EU). On February 6, 2008, the European Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said that accession negotiations with Croatia are moving ahead well. As in all new member states (NMS), the...

This paper investigates comparative trade advantages in agro-food trade. We analyze comparative advantages of Hungarian, Croatian and Slovenian agro-food trade in the European Union (EU) markets. Both the levels and pattern of the revealed comparative advantage measure are investigated. The...

The rise of a western-style middle class in many successful emerging economies like China currently is inducing deep structural changes on agricultural world markets and within the global agri-food business. As a result of both higher incomes and concerns over product safety and quality the...

The aim of this paper is to present an analysis of farm-level data collected in a survey of 464 Polish farms in 2000. Performance indicators of farms in three Polish voivodships are compared with farm accountancy data from two German Länder. The results show that Polish farms were much less...

Our purpose here is to challenge the big-bang approach to economic history in which some alleged institutional imposition - a deus machine - is claimed to launch a series of new economic behaviors. This so-called prime mover is then carried forward by the inexorable forces of path dependency to...