This research assesses the effects of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards in international trade by introducing a new concept, bridge to cross (BTC), with product standards. The BTC in this paper is the regulatory gap between the exporting and importing countries with regard to any...

We seek to contribute to the emerging economic theory on trade, the environment and development. Using panel data across countries, econometric models are estimated to predict the effects of openness on organic water pollutant (BOD) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Results indicate that freer...

On the basis of the stochastic kernel approach, the paper verifies the agricultural convergence process from 1994-2003 across a sample of 170 EU-15 regions at Nuts2 level classified according to their initial competitive profile through the Kohonen Self-Organizing Maps technique. The results...

After two decades of liberalized economic policies together with early accession to WTO, Sri Lanka could not achieve the exp ected fast economic growth. Agriculture growth in particular fell sharply. WTO Doha round expects a deeper liberalization. Instead, we will benefit more from being a...

Agricultural supply chains are changing globally with pervasive food standards and increased vertical coordination. The impact of these changes for developing countries and for small farmers in those countries is not yet well understood. We analyze the developments in high-standards FFV supply...

This paper reviews the opportunities and challenges that Eastern African farmers face in accessing domestic, regional and international markets. With rising population and incomes, domestic markets offer great opportunities for farmers. However, because of structural, institutional and...

The consideration of environmental matters in trade liberalization agreements has become an issue since they were included in NAFTA and recognized Uruguay round agreement that created the WTO. Many WTO members, especially the less developed countries, remain opposed to including environmental...

A time series model is estimated to identify the interrelation among prices on the international and the EU domestic market for butter. Although the findings were not derived from a causal model, the inspection of the data provides economically reasonable and important insights in structural...

We develop a measure of consumer welfare by approximating Hicksian compensating variation as a function of all commodity prices and compensated price elasticities. The unique feature of this approach is that all direct- and cross-commodity effects of a demand system are incorporated into the...

Improvement in the performance of agricultural markets was the ultimate goal of market liberalisation. In this paper, firm (trader) size distribution as a factor influencing market performance is analyzed using maize and fertilizer traders from Kenya. Firm size distribution was assessed by...