In this paper we analyze the impact of the EU multi-level co-financing system on regional policy-making and priority setting taking the case of the agri-environmental program of Saxony-Anhalt in Germany. The implications of several co-financing scenarios are analyzed and compared to respective...

Within this paper, we present an interactive modelling approach to support budgeting decisions at the program level and discuss its potential and limitations to contribute to more objective-oriented policy-making. The central feature of the approach is a linear optimisation model which is...

Many economic analysis tools are used to evaluate the effects of policies on rural development. However, a number of unexplored options are still available from the literature about policy analysis and biophysical systems representations. A particularly important need concerns the representation...

This paper explores how farm productivity affects poverty, and how various factor market constraints affect farm productivity. The empirical analysis draws on representative surveys of farm households in Kilimanjaro and Ruvuma, two cash crop growing regions in Tanzania. We find that poorer...

The rural areas in Bulgaria cover more then 80% of the country territory and account for about 29% of the population. Their development depends strongly on agricultural sector. The paper examines structural changes in agriculture, labour market situation in rural areas and presents the main...

This research aims at shedding empirical light on the relative efficiency of small-scale maize producers in Romania. Farmers in transition countries still face heavily distorted price systems resulting from imperfect market conditions and socioeconomic and institutional constraints. To capture...

The paper focuses on the competitiveness of organic horticultural farms implementing short food supply chain (SFSC), by analysing the organisational structures adopted by farmers and their economic performance. The collection of data based on face to face interviews with farmers and the review...

The food chain concept is an increasingly common theoretical instrument for food and rural development policy and many countries adopt the so-called “new rural paradigm”, so to integrate different sectoral policies. This paper aims at adopting the food chain paradigm in order to analyse the...

The paper provides an empirical study of the dynamics of ownership changes in Czech agricultural companies, which are assigned by unique heterogeneity in ownership forms. Since employee ownership has retained a relatively important place in these structures, neoclassical, as well as...

An intermittent and lumpy pattern of investments is observed in the Dutch horticulture sector: only 16.5% of firms experience of investment spike, but they account for 67.7% of total investment. The objective of this paper is to examine the impact of time-varying and time-invariant variables on...