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...

The goal of this study is to assess householdsâ labor allocation in the wake of Chinaâs efforts to develop the rural labor market in a manner that is conductive to its transition to a market economy. Applying the agricultural household model as the theoretical framework, we help to understand...

Land reform and farm restructuring have always been a major component of the transition from plan to market in all formerly socialist countries, and especially in the 12 former Soviet republics forming the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Ukraine, the second most populous country in CIS...

Subsistence agriculture is probably the least understood and the most neglected type of agriculture. In a globalised, market-driven world, it remains at the same time a myth and a marginal phenomenon. Empirically, subsistence agriculture for a long time seemed to be restricted to developing...

Although interest in the structure and relational features of social capital and its underlying networks has grown since the early 1990s, the terms do not embody any ideas that are really new to sociologists, but are indeed rather new to economists. Until the 1950s, land, labour, and financial...

Problem and objectives. Non-farm rural diversification is gaining prominence in the debate on rural development since the end of the 1990s. The expansion of non-farm employment and the diversification of incomes are important policy objectives because they offer a solution to the employment and...

On the verge of EU accession, Polandâs agricultural sector is characterised by a number of distinct structural weaknesses, which are a major reason for the unsatisfactory income situation of rural households. Among these weaknesses are that farm productivity is substantially below EU standards,...

During the transition of the Vietnamese economy, adaptation of the financial system was one of the most challenging reforms. A major task of this reform was to expand the financial systemâs outreach to the newly emerging private sector and household economies, especially in rural areas....