Agriculture is still the most important sector in driving economic growth and poverty reduction in developing countries. In recent times, global agricultural food systems around the world are undergoing a rapid transformation with modern retailers, private standards, and vertically integrated...

GlobalGAP is an important private standard in the food sector. Our work consists of two essays. First essay investigates into geographic diffusion of GlobalGAP. We use a panel from 2008 to 2012 for 170 FAO member countries to analyze GlobalGAP diffusion in the agricultural sector as a whole as...

This thesis presents three selected studies on the topic of performance and dynamics of agricultural firms. It constitutes three empirical investigations which analyze the factors that determine firm performance, changes in firm size, as well as the extent to which firm performance influences...

Smallholder market participation has been discussed as a catalyst against poverty. This dissertation addresses policy tools to enable market linkage of small farmers in rural areas. It looks at road infrastructure improvement and NGO-based market linkage assistance. The research shows that a...

Oil palm has become one of the most rapidly expanding crops throughout the humid tropics. Over the last two decades, the area under oil palm has almost tripled and its production more than quadrupled. This development is mainly attributed to the rising demand for vegetable oils and biofuels,...

Diese Dissertation umfasst drei Studien zu Preistransmission und Marktintegration in Schweizer Agrar- und Lebensmittelmärkten. Der Artikel "Protecting the Swiss milk market from foreign price shocks: Public border protection vs. quality differentiation" analysiert räumliche oder horizontale...

In many developing countries, the food retail sector is rapidly modernizing. With rising urban middle classes, supermarkets are increasingly replacing wet markets and other traditional retail outlets as the preferred place of food purchases. These shifts in the food retail sector also have...

Measuring vertical price transmission (VPT) has become a widespread means to evaluate the performance of food value chain. To do so, agricultural economists employ time series methods on spatially aggregated data of prices at a regional/ national level. The conclusions of these studies are...

Over the past decade, changing consumer preferences for variety, convenience, safer, and healthier attributes have been shaping meat demand patterns in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), especially in Ghana. Some of these changes have led to the increasing consumption of poultry meat. This trend has...

Throughout the past years, agricultural technological inputs have been actively evolving with a moderate rate of technology adoption. The adoption of agricultural technological inputs has been encouraged by, among others, escalating demand in the food sector in both developed and developing...