Croatia is very close to meeting the requirements necessary for becoming a member of the European Union (EU). On February 6, 2008, the European Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said that accession negotiations with Croatia are moving ahead well. As in all new member states (NMS), the...

Although interest in the structure and relational features of social capital and its underlying networks has grown since the early 1990s, the terms do not embody any ideas that are really new to sociologists, but are indeed rather new to economists. Until the 1950s, land, labour, and financial...

Polskie obszary wiejskie nadal wykazują wysoki stopieÅ zatrudnienia w rolnictwie w porównaniu z pozostaÅymi krajami Unii Europejskiej, co wynika z braku możliwoÅci zatrudnienia w innych sektorach gospodarki na wsi. Szczególnie zamkniÄcie zakÅadów przemysÅu ciÄżkiego we...

Since the beginning of the 1990s a new rural development policy, which has later been called the "new rural paradigm" by the OECD, has received increasing attention in the European Union (EU) and elsewhere. It is expected that these policy measures attenuate social and economic problems in rural...

Over fifteen years have elapsed since the transition from the centrally planned economic system started in the early 1990âs. During this time agricultural and rural areas of Central and Eastern Europe have undergone profound structural changes with wide variations in the degree of...

This Discussion Paper documents a survey conducted in rural China in 2005. A multi-topic survey funded by the Sino-German international Training Program "Sustainable Resource Use in North China", the project covers farm management, land property rights and rural credit access on the North China...

This paper presents the results of a case study of local economic development in Dolina Strugu, Podkarpackie voivodship, Poland. Its aim is to analyse local development problems and chances, to investigate the potential of endogenous initiatives to support economic development, and to examine...

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the gap in economic development between rural and urban regions in Poland has continuously grown. Increasing income disparities and the lack of job opportunities have already led to an outflow of young people out of and an increasing obsolescence in rural areas....

Polish rural areas, compared to other EU-25 member states, still show a high agricultural employment due to a lack of job opportunities in other rural economic sectors. In particular, in South-eastern Poland the shut down of heavy industry companies in the early 1990s left many rural inhabitants...