Although RDP 2007-2013 expenditures represent less than 20% of total CAP expenditures, this policy is supposed to support rural areas in facing new challenges. Actually, EU rural areas are going through major transformations. Due to the very different development processes that rural areas have...

In EU Countries in the last decade there has been a reduction of the number of farms, combined with a significant increase in their average size. First response to crisis in EU agriculture is the enhancement the competitiveness of farms in bio-economy issues, i.e. quality: EU farmers must build...

We analyse the determinants of off-farm labour participation of farmers, an issue relevant in view of the agricultural sector coping with increasing productivity and in terms of rural development. We apply a farm-household theoretical model. The data for the empirical analysis are a 5 year...

A substantial literature has addressed the many issues relevant to describe, analyse and assess the question of income distribution and its role vis-­‐a-­‐vis economic growth and its sustainability, as well as concerns about poverty and social exclusion in particular when age and gender...

In the last decade Italy has experienced a consistent decline in the number of agricultural firms. Beyond the new definition of agricultural firms, this structural change of farms is characterized by exit of small farms and increasing farm size. This paper aims at analyzing the determinants of...

Despite a large literature about energy production from renewable resources, the specific interplay between farm characteristics, market, local regulation and the CAP in the adoption of energy-related technologies by farmers is still poorly studied. This paper aims at analyzing the farmers’...

Agriculture is the main source of nitrogen loading (EEA, 2012) and is the sector with the largest remaining emission reduction potential (Sutton et al., 2011). Furthermore, surpluses of nitrogen are forecast to grow in the next decade (FAO, 2008). The objective of this study is to evaluate the...

The on-farm diversification toward multifunctional activities is perceived as central in the CAP policy reform and in Horizon 2020 strategies, because it strengthen territorial and social cohesion of the rural areas. While relations between farm-household diversification and rural economies are...

This paper studies the effect of a political regime transition on food security and more specifically on child mortality. Using a new estimation approach, the Synthetic Control Method, we find that a political reform towards a democracy does not systematically reduce child mortality. Of the 33...

This paper applies a non-parametric tool, the “relative distribution”, to identify patterns of changes in Brazil’s household income distribution over the period 2001-2011. Despite the sharp decline in income inequality recently experienced by the country, we are able to document an...