Since the end of the quasi-moratorium on genetically modified organisms (GMO) in the European Union in 2004, the establishment of GMO-free zones has become an EU wide phenomenon. In contrast to other European countries, Germany follows the concept of cooperative GMO-free zones where neighbouring...

Research on agricultural development in China has increasingly paid attention to the potentially negative effects of highly fragmented farm structures. This study provides a deeper theoretical understanding of the linkages between land fragmentation and off-farm labor supply and investigates...

This paper investigates the impact of labour force composition on productivity in EU arable farming. We test the heterogeneity of family and hired labour for a set of eight EU member states. To this end, we estimate augmented production functions using FADN data for the years 2001-2008. The...

The classical problem of agricultural productivity measurement has regained interest due to recent price hikes in world food markets. At the same time, there is a new methodological debate on the appropriate identification strategies for addressing endogeneity and collinearity problems in...

This paper reviews three arguments why government should not directly finance public goods provision in the countryside: (1) sorting and voting of residents leads to efficient local public goods provision, (2) community governance may better cope with incomplete contracting in public goods, and...

This paper shows how the involvement of local governments and individuals allowed the successful creation of a public-private partnership for agricultural marketing in South-Eastern Poland, despite a generally negative perception of cooperation among the rural population. While the regional...

In this study, we theoretically and empirically investigate the determinants of Bt-maize adoption in German regions. Specifically, we ask how the regulatory framework, the farm structures as well as the socio-political environment of GM expansion in Germany have influenced regional adoption...