The attractiveness of agricultural land available in developing countries has markedly increased in the last few years. Driven by rising and highly volatile prices for agricul- tural commodities, large land acquisitions have been undertaken by foreign investors. We formalize the discussion...

CGE models are widely used tools for economic assessments of trade policy changes. However, overall confidence in their results tends to be low. We employ the methodological framework of meta-analysis in order to approach a quantitative comparison of CGE-based simulation results. Therefore, we...

The regulation of seasonal foreign farm labour (SFFL) in Germany distorts market outcomes and produces no significant benefits for any of the affected groups. Analysis of the media discourse on this regulation indicates that its persistence can be attributed to the political sensitivity of...

This article introduces discourse analysis as a theoretical concept and an empirical methodology that may enable the endogenization of path creation and path breaking changes in conventional models of political path dependencies. Economic criteria such as rents created by a policy do not always...

Quantification of welfare changes due to trade liberalisation play a crucial role for political decision making. However, meaningful comparisons of simulation results from different sources are difficult. Often significant differences in simulated gains from liberalisation do not serve to...

The rapid urban population growth, rising level of urban poverty, and problems with food supply and distribution systems have increased the importance of developing local supplies of perishable produce of safe and good nutritional value in developing countries. This examination of consumer...

Economists use partial and general equilibrium trade simulation models to estimate the impact of changes in domestic policies and international trade rules. During the WTO Doha Development Agenda (DDA) negotiations economists have produced many different estimates of the gains that would result...

The global trend of agro-industrialisation is increasingly transforming farms and firms into specialist component suppliers within a multi-stage food processing chain. The trade-in-tasks theory predicts in this context that declining costs for cross-country outsourcing of certain stages of the...