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...