For decades, despite widespread hunger and severe malnutrition in developing countries there was little attention to agricultural development and food security, and global funding for it was declining. High and volatile food prices have caused a dramatic turnaround in public and political...

The recent spikes of global food prices induced a rapid increase in mass media coverage, public policy attention, and donor funding for food security, and for agriculture and rural poverty. This has occurred while the shift from "low" to "high" food prices has induced a shift in (demographic or...

"Modern" agricultural markets are characterized by, among other things, quality requirements and vertical coordination. The nature of the industrial organization of the value chain depends on a variety of factors, such as local institutions, economic growth, demand, institutional infrastructure...

The system of global agricultural and food trade is undergoing rapid processes of change, with important implications for economic development. In this paper we document and discuss these changes; including the rapid growth and structural change in agri-food trade, the increased consolidation in...

The EU wine market is heavily regulated. Despite the many distortions in the wine market as a consequence, refirming the regulations has proven difficult. This paper analyses the political economy mechanism that created the existing set of wine regulations. We document the historical origins of...

Almost half of the world's vineyards are in the EU and the EU produces around 60% of the world's wine. The EU is also the world's most regulated wine market. In 2007, the European Union decided on a major refirm of its wine policy, the so-called Common Market Organization (CMO) for wine. A...

This paper assesses econometrically the contribution of aid to output growth in a panel of twenty transition countries over nine years (1989-1997). The study finds a positive and statistically significant relationship between foreign aid and growth. A second result is that the positive effect of...