Our purpose here is to challenge the big-bang approach to economic history in which some alleged institutional imposition - a deus machine - is claimed to launch a series of new economic behaviors. This so-called prime mover is then carried forward by the inexorable forces of path dependency to...

Up to the end of World War II, the political-economic framework had been relatively similar all over Germany. However, the farm structure was different. While in both parts, the West and the East, about 90 per cent of all farms cultivated less than 20 ha and about one per cent more than 100 ha,...

The aim of this paper is to present an analysis of farm-level data collected in a survey of 464 Polish farms in 2000. Performance indicators of farms in three Polish voivodships are compared with farm accountancy data from two German Länder. The results show that Polish farms were much less...

A structural market model is estimated to analyse the impact of market power on resource allocation in the German and Hungarian pork markets. The regression analyses suggest that market power exists, although on a relatively low level. Moreover, the estimates show that processors might pursue...

We examine some controversial country-specific factors influencing vertical and horizontal intra-industry trade including foreign direct investment and income distributions. As concerns, the effect of differences in countries’ levels of economic development (richness), both theories and...

This article analyses the impact of national, European and global biofuel targets on German food production and land allocation until 2020. The LEITAP General Equilibrium Model simulates the interaction of agricultural and energy markets in response to the envisaged expansion of the biofuel...

The market for beer in Germany is special for many reasons, e.g. the purity law, the large number of breweries, or consumers who are highly loyal to local brands. To what extent brand loyalty affects spatial pricing strategies, is the main question of this article. We employ weekly retail...

In dem Beitrag wird am Beispiel von Primärdaten für landwirtschaftliche Betriebe in Schleswig-Holstein der Frage nach den Bestimmungsgründen für Aufnahme, Umfang und Diversifikation der außerbetrieblichen Einkommensquellen nachgegangen. Für die Messung der farmspezifischen Diversifikation...

Seasonal variations of the price premium between bread and feed wheat indicate opportunities to profitably adjusting the grain marketing strategy of farmers that harvest (and store) both qualities. In this paper, we estimate the seasonal pattern of wheat price premiums on the German market by a...

In food retailing a high degree of static price dispersion between and within stores and between brands has been documented, but at the brand and/or retail outlet level the dynamic behaviour of prices, as well as its causes, have not been analysed in the European food market context. In this...