The enforcement of contracts is necessary for efficient exchange and investment in economic activities. Contracts can be enforced through a variety of mechanisms, both public and private. However, in many developing and transitional countries these public institutions are either absent or...

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...

This absorbing book examines the period of massive structural adjustment taking place in the wine industry. For many centuries wine was very much a European product. While that is still the case today – three-quarters of world wine production, consumption and trade involve Europe and most of...

The governance of food markets is a crucial element for efficiency and distributional effects. In this paper, we use a conceptual model to show that this governance itself is endogenous in an environment of weak contract enforcement and imperfect markets, and importantly depends on the value in...

The burgeoning literature on how the benefits from research may be negative for a given price support arbitrarily ignores the costs of price supports for a given level of research. Furthermore, the very existence of price supports is inconsistent with the normative criterion that governments...

This paper develops a political economy framework that determines the factors causing underinvestment in public research expenditures. Governments are unable to fully compensate for unequal income distribution effects of research because of either their inability to make credible commitments or...

Agricultural credit and rural finance problems are important constraints on restructuring, investment, and thus on recovery and growth in transition countries. In this paper we study agricultural investments and financing in Polish agriculture. Our empirical evidence is based on a 2001 survey of...