Diese Dissertation beschreibt Marktverzerrungen auf mehreren Ebenen, die entweder aufgrund von Fehlfunktionen oder durch Interventionen politischer Art entstehen. Die Fehlfunktionen schließen einerseits Märkte mit imperfektem Wettbewerb, und andererseits Versagen auf anderweitig vollkommenen...

This thesis addresses 3 different aspects of food and poverty related problems in developing countries. The first essay presents a new operational concept of transaction costs that firstly allows assessing the magnitude and secondly recognizing the non homogeneity of food products. This is...

As the Argentinean grapevine production systems have gained global visibility, the wine industry has been revitalized with a greater focus on enological quality, technology adoption, and export orientation. Although grapevine production has decreased 36% in a decade nationwide, the province of...

Over the past four decades, China has made fruitful achievements in agricultural development, which attracted a great deal of attention within the academy. Meanwhile, Chinese agriculture has also undergone dramatic and continuing structural changes (Chen et al. 2009; Cao and Birchenall 2013),...

[...] Die Einführung von Direktzahlungen zur Kompensation von Interventionspreissenkungen war ursprünglich eine wichtige Voraussetzung für die fundamentalen Reformen der GAP seit 1992, auch um Bestandsschutz für die im Vertrauen auf das politische Versprechen hoher Agrarpreise getätigten...

In the new millennium, the soaring economic growth in Asia and Africa, the increase of world trade, and globalization have boosted the global demand for cocoa. However, world cocoa supply could barely keep up with demand. These processes triggered a high volatility in global cocoa prices....

Social networks can serve as an instrument to link agents with each other over space and time. The emerging pattern can display the flow of information, the diffusion of technology or the trade flow of products between all kinds of agents. Networks are very flexible constructs, which are defined...

Over the last decade the link between agricultural and oil markets has reinforced after the introduction of biofuels as substitutes for gasoline and diesel. Although the literature on price transmission between these markets is prolific, research on second order moment dynamics is scant. This...