This paper analyses relevant determinants for the probability to initiate a dispute on policy measures under the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement system. The empirical analysis differs from existing assessments by focusing on agri-food related disputes and provides a more...

Using a panel data set for about 70 countries, this paper jointly analyzes agri-investment trends and food security developments in vulnerable countries. This work empirically connects two mainly independent debates about impacts of agri-investments on food security and on the proposed...

The addition of commodities to financial portfolios and resulting weight adjustments may create volatility linkages between commodity and financial markets, especially during financial crises. Also, biofuel mandates are suspected to integrate agricultural and energy markets. We calculate...

Challenges arising from the EU policy focus on rural development lead to an increased demand for farm structure analyses at a regional level. The study’s aim is to show (1) which way structural change differs across EU15 regions referring to size and production orientation and (2) how far...

We develop a Bayesian estimation framework for non-stationary Markov models for situations where both sample data on observed transitions between states (micro data) and population data, where only the proportion of individuals in each state is observed (macro data), are available. Posterior...

In 2010, the European (EU) High Level Expert Group on milk proposed the introduction of standard contracts between raw milk producers and processors to improve the bargaining position of producers and to stabilize the market by balancing dairy supply and demand. However, contracts may distort...

This paper presents an application of Bayesian analysis to an AIDS model of Japanese meat demand extending previous approaches in three ways: (1) The methodology employed is robust with respect to the likelihood function but retains the generic, easily programmable character of algorithms...

This paper presents a short comparative analysis of USDA and FAPRI projections for world wheat market prices until 2005. The relevance of different model assumptions regarding assumed inflation, exchange rates, policy parameters as well as shifts in demand and production development are...

This paper presents a Bayesian alternative to Generalized Maximum Entropy (GME) and Generalized Cross Entropy (GCE) methods for deriving solutions to econometric models represented by underdetermined systems of equations. For certain types of econometric model specifications, the Bayesian...