Measuring the Success of Agricultural Transition: An Application to Russia

The paper presents a model of the agro-food system in a transition economy, which shows howthe move from a planned to a market economy affects the production and consumption of goodsand economic welfare. The model is then used to identify two complementary approaches formeasuring the success of agricultural transition, where success is defined as increasing consumerwelfare. The first approach is to identify and measure quantitative indicators of economic gain.The second is to identify the policies that would lead to greater welfare, and then measure theextent to which these policies have been implemented. An assessment of Russian agriculturalreform using the two evaluation approaches shows that only modest progress has been made.Russia has not met the (perhaps overly optimistic) expectations of many observers that transitionwould substantially increase farm efficiency and productivity.