This paper examines the effect of the decoupling of farm direct payments upon the off-farm labour supply decisions of farmers in both Ireland and Italy. We use panel data from the Farm Business Survey (REA) and FADN database covering the period from 2002 to 2009 to model these decisions. Drawing...

Well functioning factor markets are a crucial condition for the competitiveness and growth of agriculture. In the case of labour, institutions and regulation may give rise to agricultural labour market heterogeneity which could have important effects on the functioning of the labour market and...

The paper deals with the determinants of labour out-migration from agriculture across 149 EU regions over the 1990-2008 period. The central aim is to shed light on the role played by CAP payments on this important adjustment process. Using static and dynamic panel data estimators, we show that...

This paper analyzes the extent to which the reduction of import tariffs – as a measure of import competition – affects the rate of quality upgrading in the agri-food sector. This relation is studied using highly disaggregated EU-15 import data from more than 70 countries in thousands of food...

The concept of sustainability is one of the forefront issues in global agricultural production at present, given mounting pressure to increase food production in both a socially responsible and environmentally friendly way. From an Irish perspective the sustainable intensification of agriculture...

Melitz and Ottaviano’s (2008) firm heterogeneity model predicts that trade liberalization induces a selection process from low to high productivity firms, that translates into an industry productivity growth. A similar firms’ selection effect is induced by market size. These predictions are...

Since 2004 there has been a sharp decrease in border protection for the EU rice industry. Because the EU grants trade preferences to a considerable number of rice exporting developing countries, the reform implied preference erosion as well. By addressing the impact of preference erosion on...