Positive political economy is usually concerned with economic explanations of observed policy choices, while the timing of a policy reform has not gained similar attention. This is somewhat surprising since policy makers most often are free to decide both the design and timing of a policy...

A brief review of the history of agricultural policymaking in Europe and the U.S. reveals that major policy changes have often been brought about by major socio-political "shocks," such as the Great Depression and World War II. Such shocks also lead to the creation of institutions that tend to...

This paper is concerned with the timing of an agricultural policy reform under uncertainty. The focus is on the opportunity cost of giving up the option to wait when implementing a policy reform. Including the option value in applied policy analysis can help explain why conventional analyses may...

This paper gives a general mathematical definition of an institution, and presents an explicit formal method by which to incorporate institutions in a standard general equilibrium model. We illustrate our concept using a modified Prisoner's dilemma game in which property rights over natural...

The aim of this study is to evaluate both qualitatively and quantitatively the value of new information about and the information systems set for credence characteristics of beef. Economics of information is our theoretical framework. The quantitative approach focuses to measure the ex ante...

This paper examines Finnish citizens' attitudes towards multifunctional agriculture and further, the connections among these attitudes, consumers' willingness to pay, and some socio economic factors. Attitudinal dimensions were executed by using factor analysis. The respondents (N=1300) were...

While agricultural policies in Europe place ever greater emphasis on the importance of agricultures' multiple roles, it is difficult to find policy measures designed specially for multifunctionality. The aim of our study is to identify actual and preferred policy measures to improve or to...