The paper reviews the experience of Poland and Russia with economic reform, with occasional comparison to China’s experience. The author argues that macroeconomic chaos in Poland and Russia preceded reform and was allayed by reform; that there is no necessary tradeoff between reform and growth, and that the Polish and Russian experience shows that it is possible to create clear property rights ...

In theory, lump-sum transfers are a way to redistribute wealth without distorting production decisions. Recent agricultural policy reforms are an unusual large-scale application of this concept. The 1996 Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform (FAIR) Act removed most price-contingent agricultural subsidies and replaced them with Production Flexibility Contracts—lump-sum payments with few ti...

The paper includes: (i) a descriptive account of what has actually happened in the Baltic States in regard to agricultural sector reforms; (ii) an analysis of the institutions, policies, laws and regulations underlying the process of privatizing farming and land ownership; (iii) the interaction of these factors and their agricultural policy implications; and (iv) the influence of interest group...

We study the effect of improvements in peasants’ property rights launched by the Stolypin reform on agricultural productivity in early 20 century Russia. We find that the enclosure component of the reform caused an increase in land productivity. We argue that this effect is mainly driven by better usage rights and not because of economies of scale or better tenure security. In addition, we find...

The key objective of agricultural protectionism is reflected in the protection and developing of agriculture sector. Integrated parts of this policy in the European Union are the initial model of agricultural protectionism and a new strategy of agricultural policy, which emerged as a response to the shortcomings of previously existing model. The paper presents the key reforms of agricultural po...

One of the major ideological debates in development centers on whether the provision of local public goods in developing countries should be made financially self-sustaining, as opposed to relying on international donors or national governments. Should external donors indefinitely fund activities that generate positive externalities, or can they be most effective by establishing institutions th...

The production of public goods like amenity value of the landscape, food security, preservation of rural communities and rural lifestyle, by agricultural sector is a subject that has been widely accepted by experts. However, in many policies and political analyses carried out, solely the production of private goods by the agricultural sector is paid attention and the important function of publi...

Previous studies of tenancy and land reform programs suggest that these programs substantially increased agricultural productivity. However, these studies are limited to sharecropping environments. This paper investigates the productivity effect of the 1953 land ownership transfer program in Taiwan, where fixed-rental contracts predominated. This program transferred 27% of the paddy land to inc...

The objective of this paper is to propose a spatial disaggregation procedure that will be useful in assessing economic and environmental impacts of the last CAP reform of EU agriculture(e.g., the study of water pollution due to agriculture). The proposed disaggregation method uses agricultural data in conjunction with biophysical processes to break down agricultural FADN data available at the r...