Many rural areas in (East) Germany are characterised by declining birth rates and selective migration. Similarly, the rural economy is stagnating or even shrinking. Many communes are no more in a position to guarantee legally stipulated provisions of basic public services. In many rural areas...

Viele Regionen - besonders in Ostdeutschland - werden durch sinkende Geburtenraten und selektive Abwanderung geprägt. Viele Kommunen sind nicht mehr in der Lage, ihren gesetzlichen Verpflichtungen bei der öffentlichen Daseinsvorsorge nachzukommen. Entgegen dem allgemeinen Trend nimmt die...

Efficiency in microfinance requires accounting for a specific ambiguous production goal. Beyond financial performance, microfinance institutions are to be assessed with regard to their social impact. Based on a comprehensive data collection campaign on 15 Bulgarian agricultural credit...

In the Czech Republic, agricultural production is still dominated by corporate farms. However, not all of them had been equally successful, economically. In general, a varying adoption of production factors is identified as being of influence. Whether their ability to collaborate with other...

Private farming is the dominant mode of agricultural production in most European countries. Not all farmers are equally successful, economically, which is usually explained by different levels of production factors, i.e. land, labour and capital. This article analyses whether social capital is...

Up to the end of World War II, the political-economic framework had been relatively similar all over Germany. However, the farm structure was different. While in both parts, the West and the East, about 90 per cent of all farms cultivated less than 20 ha and about one per cent more than 100 ha,...

Diese Untersuchung befasst sich mit der Rolle der Landwirtschaft im Bereich der ländlichen Daseinsversorgung. Zum einen wird untersucht, ob und wenn ja, inwieweit der landwirtschaftliche Sektor von dem demographischen Wandel tangiert wird. Zum anderen wird analysiert, in welchem Rahmen...

The findings presented in this edited book are derived from the activities of the SCARLED (Structural Change in Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods) project. It had been co-financed by the European Commission and lasted from January 2007 until September 2010. SCARLED pursued two major research...

Social capital matters in determining a person’s or a family’s material well-being. It is argued that social capital functions similar to the traditional production factors. However, there are not many empirical analyses looking into this hypothesis at the farm-household level in...

With the collapse of the socialist regime in East Germany in late 1989 and the rising political call for unification in early 1990, a radical and abrupt change of the institutional structure became necessary. The (agricultural) administration had to be totally restructured. This included not...