Recently a new approach to political economy has been consolidated. The political analysis of transaction costs is an attempt to solve some of the problems which arise in economic theories of public policy. This paper deals with the notions of transaction costs, institutional efficiency,...

We consider a partnership game with two roles in which a large population of firms interact to carry out, say, R&D joint ventures. The partners have to build a common-property asset through a sequence of costly investments. Firms have access to a monitoring technology whose cost depends on the...

We study the effect of alleviating information asymmetry regarding product quality that is widespread in developing-country agricultural markets. Opportunistic buyers may underreport quality levels back to farmers to reduce the price they have to pay. In response, farmers may curb investment,...

In emerging markets for high-value food products in developing countries, processing companies search for efficient ways to source raw material of consistent quality. One widely embraced approach is contract farming. But relatively little is known about the appropriate design of contracts,...

The role of inter-enterprise relationships in European pig meat, beef and cereals chains is analysed. Using survey data from 1,442 farmers, processors and retailers in six countries, the empirical relevance of several factors potentially influencing the choice of contract types and the...

Since the 1990s, producers of farm commodities have been attempting to enter value-added agri-food sectors by means of joint ownership of hybrid cooperatives. New generation cooperatives, characterized by substantial supply and equity requirements, inspired much farm producer optimism before...

The paper presents findings of a large study on socio-economic impacts of the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster on the Japanese agriculture and food sector. It contains fourteen parts: introduction with the framework of analysis; a brief description of events and...