Against the rising global concern of how to achieve sustainable output expansion in food, we document the main outcomes of post-Soviet agricultural recovery and restructuring in the Kazakhstan grain region. Together with an expansion of cropland area and increasing capital input, real...

Dieses Discussion Paper enthält die Kurzfassungen der Beiträge, die im Rahmen des Workshops zur Agrarentwicklung in Mittel- und Osteuropa für Doktoranden und Post-Doc's vorgestellt und diskutiert werden sollen. Dieser Workshop möchte Nachwuchswissenschaftlern die Möglichkeit geben, Ihre...

The paper empirically investigates credit access and borrowing costs in Poland's rural financial market. We conduct an econometric analysis based on cross-sectional survey data including formal loans taken in the period 1997-1999. A hedonic regression of the effective interest rate, comprising...

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...

On the basis of portfolio selection theory, this paper finds that whole-farm risk must be regarded as a major reason for the low level of credit flow to agriculture in North-western Kazakhstan. A quadratic programming model was used in order (a) to demonstrate the comparatively high overall risk...

This article evaluates the recent evolution of farm structure in Kazakhstan’s grain region against the reform objectives of the 1990s and the family farm theory that underpinned the latter. In the study region, super-large agroholdings, large-scale enterprises and smaller individual farms...

Using a unique dataset of a commercial microfinance institution in Madagascar, this paper investigates how the provision of microfinance loans with (in)flexible repayment schedules affects loan delinquencies of agricultural borrowers. Flexible repayment schedules allow a redistribution of...

Kazakhstan is now widely regarded as a key player on world agricultural markets, with considerable export potential in the wheat, beef and dairy sectors. Based on unique farm-level data covering all production systems currently relevant, we offer new insights into the constraints that hamper...

How to revitalise the cattle and dairy sectors under the WTO commitments has emerged as a major policy challenge for the Russian government. This article raises the question whether livestock recovery in East Germany does provide any insights that could be of value to current policy makers in...