Edited volume of the contributions to the mini-symposium of the same title at the IAAE conference 2009.

Welfare economics as the traditional, prescriptive theory framework used in agricultural economics has been criticised by institutional economists as being largely irrelevant to real-world policy issues. We therefore ask how normative statements are possible within an economic theory framework...

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...

Politicians and farm lobbyists frequently use the argument that agricultural policy is necessary to safeguard jobs in agriculture. We explore whether this is true by conducting an econometric ex-post evaluation of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy in the three East German States...

This study provides a deeper theoretical understanding of the linkages between land fragmentation and off-farm labor supply and investigates this relationship empirically in a more direct and robust way than in the existing literature. Drawing upon a rural household panel dataset collected in...

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...