In the 1990ies the ultimate target of social security has been widened: Social security aims at protecting people against life risks and helping them to take advantage of social and economic opportunities. Existing social security systems in rural areas of developing countries are often...

This article provides an overview of the most important reforms, their background, and corresponding changes in Estonian agriculture during the transition period from 1988-2008. The past two decades have been divided into three sub-periods to outline differences in dynamics and the direction of...

Micronutrient malnutrition is a serious problem in many developing countries. Recently, agricultural technologies have been discussed as a complement to other intervention programs. Plant breeding, targeted at developing staple foods with higher contents of essential vitamins and trace minerals,...

Die Effizienzanalyse mit Hilfe der Data-Envelopment-Analyse (DEA) stellt ein weit verbreitetes Verfahren zur vergleichenden Einschätzung der empirischen Performanz von Entscheidungseinheiten (z.B. Unternehmen) dar. Angesichts „boomender“ Anwendungen auf eine Vielzahl...

The transition of East German agriculture led to major structural adjustments that showed some very particular phenomena. For instance, most of the successors of the former agricultural production cooperatives (LPGs) make slight losses and they operate at a higher employment level than new and...

This paper sets out to develop an economic framework for ex post evaluations of agri-environmental schemes. We begin by developing a non-parametric model for estimating farm-level environmental efficiency scores. We then use this efficiency framework to devise a set of economic criteria for...

This paper develops a methodology for asymmetric treatment of desirable and undesirable outputs. First, a hyperbolic output efficiency measurement is used to describe a middle term transformation of production processes where producers try to improve their competitiveness together with a...

European agricultural policy has undergone profound changes during the past decade. The nucleus of this reform has been the transformation of the agricultural and food policy from a producer centred perspective of agriculture to a more market and consumer oriented food chain approach. Such a...