This study investigates the socio-historical relationships existing between the development of the agricultural structure and the process of technical development. Adopting a political economy posture, it is argued that the development of technical procedures in agriculture has been aimed...

This analysis uses an analytical frameworkgrounded in political economy perspectives of theglobalization of the agro-food sector combined with acase study approach focusing on the Marine StewardshipCouncil (MSC) to inform discussions regarding thecharacteristics of societal regulation in...

This paper provides an analytical panorama of agriculture in the European context to be employed as a background for reading the articles contained in this issue of Agriculture and Human Values. Brief summaries of their contents constitute the concluding part of the present contribution....

The article illustrates the major features of the development of Italian agriculture from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present. It is argued that such development has been characterized by dualism. At the structural level dualism refers to the existence of a large number of small...

This paper analyzes Wal-Mart’s expansion into food retailing, focusing on its store conversion strategy via a formal IO entry framework. Forty-eight different competing model specifications are considered to determine how the company perceives competition from incumbent food retailers and how...

In spite of growing consumers’ interest for functional foods and strong growth of their markets, limited knowledge of the demand for these products and their profitability is available. Adapting the LA/AIDS model by means of Pinkse, Slade, and Brett’s (2002) distance metric method, this...

This paper investigates the impacts of store brands (i.e., private labels) and retail characteristics (scanners, deli, bakery, and pharmacy departments, ATMs, restaurant and store size) on fluid milk prices using 1,740 supermarket-level observations from four cities. Non-parametric results...

Despite considerable debate as to Wal-Mart’s impact on retail workers, to date there has been little structural analysis on the topic. This paper measures and tests for Wal-Mart’s monopsony power in local labor markets using a dominant-firm model and data on contiguous U.S. counties where...