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...

The rise of a western-style middle class in many successful emerging economies like China currently is inducing deep structural changes on agricultural world markets and within the global agri-food business. As a result of both higher incomes and concerns over product safety and quality the...

The impact of multinational firms on the domestic agricultural sector in developing countries is controversial, in particular in India. Relying on a unique set of household-level data from the state of Punjab, we study the biggest dairy company in the world (Nestlé) in India and compare its...

Studies on efficiency changes in transition agriculture yield mixed results. This paper develops both a theoretical model and an empirical analysis of how distribution of efficiency scores changes with the various stages of transition. We use a unique set of representative farm survey data to...

Like all markets in the former communist countries, the Eastern European beer market has been strongly affected by the economic reforms in the beginning of the 1990s. In the first years after reforms, there was a substantial decline in the production of barley, malt and beer. However, the...

The transition of a centrally planned to a more market economy provides a natural Experiment on the role of institutions and exchange in economic growth. This paper uses a unique dataset based on a survey of 305 dairy producing and supplying households in Bulgaria to analyze the impact of late...

There is no consensus about how globalization –trade and foreign investments – affects poverty reduction. Using household survey data, this study contributes to the empirical literature on globalization and poverty by analyzing the household-level implications of increased foreign...

In this paper I draw lessons from two quasi-natural experiments (the transition process in former Communist countries and the rapid globalization of food chains) on the optimality of farms and agricultural structures more generally. I argue that (a) the farm structures that have emerged from the...