From the Olympics to the World Cup, mega sporting events are a source of enjoyment for tens of thousands of people, but can also be a source of intense debate and controversy. This insightful Handbook addresses a number of central questions, including: How are host cities selected and under what...

This paper uses a political economy model which integrates risk to analyse whether the nature of public food standards [food safety standards, food quality standards, and social and environmental standards] affects the politically optimal level of the standard and the likelihood of trade...

We develop a simple theoretical model that explains the slant towards negative coverage in news media. In a framework where news is informative and consumers are risk averse, diminishing marginal utility implies that information about a negative income shock is more valuable than information...

Few years ago, the widely shared view was that low food prices were a curse to developing countries. The dramatic increase in food prices in 2006-2008 appears to have fundamentally altered this view. The vast majority of analyses and reports in 2008 and 2009 state that high food prices have a...

The rapid transformation of agri-food value chains in Africa and other developing countries hasimportant implications for economic growth and poverty reduction. Policy makers increasinglyrecognize this but there is a need for a better understanding of what value chain transformationentails and...

Summary This paper uses new poverty data based on household level surveys to analyze changes in rural poverty and rural-urban poverty differences in 23 transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The paper presents a series of hypotheses to explain differences...