As recently as a century ago, one out of two people in Europe was employed in the agricultural sector. Today agriculture represents only a small fraction of total employment in most EU member states. What makes this decline in agricultural employment even more striking is that this evolution has...

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 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...

This paper examines the relationship between structural changes and EU agricultural policies and their implications in the context of the enlarged EU. The paper examines the impact of EU policies on the restructuring and competitiveness of farms in the new member states taking into account...

This paper was presented at the INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN LIVESTOCK PRODUCTS SYMPOSIUM in Auckland, New Zealand, January 18-19, 2001. The Symposium was sponsored by: the International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium, the Venture Trust, Massey University, New Zealand, and the Centre for...

There is no consensus about how globalization –trade and foreign investments – affects poverty reduction. Using household survey data, this study contributes to the empirical literature on globalization and poverty by analyzing the household-level implications of increased foreign...

Recent analysis of policy-induced income changes along the agro-food chain in Bulgaria uses an extension of the PSE/CSE methodology. It shows that measures taken by the government with the intention of supporting consumers have led to a substantial negative impact on producers, without having a...

Food and agricultural commodity value chains in developing and transition countries have undergone tremendous changes in the past decades. Companies and property rights have been privatized, markets liberalized, and economies integrated into global food systems. The liberalization and...

Important changes took place in agricultural policies in Europe in the 19th and 20th century. The dramatic nature of the changes are illustrated by two years, a century apart: 1860 and 1960. In the 1860s European nations agree on a series of trade agreements which spread free trade across the...