Since the late 1980s, agriculture in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) has been under considerable adjustment pressure due to changing political, economic and institutional environments. These changes have been linked to the transition process, as well as the ongoing integration...

Since the seminal work of Adam Smith, markets have been considered an efficient tool for co-ordinating the behaviour of economic agents. The basic characteristic of a market economy is that the complex system of interaction among individuals is not centrally coordinated. Under the assumption of...

The rise of a western-style middle class in many successful emerging economies like China currently is inducing deep structural changes on agricultural world markets and within the global agri-food business. As a result of both higher incomes and concerns over product safety and quality the...

A central criticism common to agricultural economic modelling approaches for policy analy-sis is that they do not adequately take account of a number of characteristic factors of the agri-cultural sector. This concerns aspects like the immobility of land, heterogeneity of farms, in-teractions...

The development of competitive and efficient agricultural structures has been one of the central goals of agricultural policy making in addition to ensuring a fair standard of living for farmers. To achieve these goals, the agricultural sector in most industrialised nations has long been the...