Retailers’ private standards are increasingly important in addressing consumer concerns about safety, quality and social and environmental issues. Empirical evidence shows that these private standards are frequently more stringent than their public counterparts. This article develops a...

The present-day border between Belgium and the Netherlands traces back to the separation of the Low Countries after the Dutch Revolt (1566-1648) against Spanish rule. The capacity to finance war expenditures played a central role in the outcome of this conflict. Excise taxes on beer consumption...

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 reform of its wine policy, the so-called Common Market Organization (CMO) for wine. A...

Starting around 1996, Russia witnessed a strong growth in beer consumption, leading to a fivefold growth in average beer consumption and making beer the most important alcoholic drink today. We use survey data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to analyze individual...

We provide the first quantitative analysis to scrutinize the ample ethnographic evidence that magico-religious beliefs affect the demand for conventional healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa. We rely on the unique case of Benin, where Voodoo-adherence is freely reported, and varies greatly within...

Consumers have increasing demands for product standards. This has important implications for development. This paper develops a formal theory of the process of the introduction of high product standards in developing countries. The model endogenizes the introduction of high standards. Initial...

This paper develops a formal theory of the endogenous process of the introduction of high quality products in developing countries. Initial differences in income and capital and transaction costs are shown to affect the emergence of and the size of the high quality economy. Initial differences...

This paper presents a political economy model of public standards in an open economy model. We use the model to derive the political optimum and to analyze different factors that have an influence on this political equilibrium. The paper discusses how the level of development influences the...

Retailers’ private standards are increasingly important in addressing consumer concerns about safety, quality and social and environmental issues. Empirical evidence shows that these private standards are frequently more stringent than their public counterparts. I develop a political...

We study the political economy of instrument choice in agricultural and food policies. After a review of the historical evolution of European agricultural price and trade policy instruments since 1880, we develop a political economy model of instrument choice. The key predictions of the model...