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Ukraine has great potential in the production of agricultural products & their export. After a steep decline, agricultural production, since 2000, has once again been on the increase. For some products, such as barley, Ukraine is already the world's leading exporter. However, up to now, its agricultural potential has only been realized in a rudimentary way. The greatest handicap of Ukrainian agricultural is that its singular climatic & geographic advantages are not being fully exploited, the result of inadequate technological expertise & management skills as well as a shortage of reliable framework conditions in farm policy. Adapted from the source document.

[Einleitung und Lernziele] Landwirtschaftliche Arbeitsmärkte spielen für die Gestaltung der Agrarpolitik in der EU und in der Mehrzahl der weitgehend marktwirtschaftlich organisierten Länder eine besondere Rolle. Der landwirtschaftliche Arbeitsmarkt hat für die Gestaltung der Agrarpolitik eine besondere Bedeutung. So ist die Bundesregierung nach dem heute noch gültigen Landwirtschaftsgesetz von 1955 verpflichtet, mit den Mitteln der allgemeinen Wirtschafts- und Agrarpolitik die soziale Lage der in der Landwirtschaft tätigen Menschen an die vergleichbarer Berufsgruppen anzugleichen. Damit wird implizit unterstellt, dass der Marktmechanismus ohne staatliche Eingriffe nicht zu der gewünschten Entlohnung der Arbeitskräfte in der Landwirtschaft führt. Für die EU-Agrarpolitik gibt es entsprechende Zielsetzungen. Im EWG Vertrag von Rom aus dem Jahr 1957 heißt es bezüglich der Arbeitsmärkte in Artikel 39: "Ziel der gemeinsamen Agrarpolitik ist es: a) die Produktivität der Landwirtschaft durch Förderung des technischen Fortschritts, Rationalisierung der landwirtschaftlichen Erzeugung und den bestmöglichen Einsatz der Produktionsfaktoren, insbesondere der Arbeitskräfte, zu steigern; b) auf diese Weise der landwirtschaftlichen Bevölkerung, insbesondere durch Erhöhung des Pro-Kopf-Einkommens der in der Landwirtschaft tätigen Personen, eine angemessene Lebenshaltung zu gewährleisten". Dieser Artikel hat alle bisherigen Änderungen der EWG bzw. EU Verträge überlebt: Geändert hat sich nur die Nummerierung des Artikels. [.]

AbstractWe analyze price relationships on international rice markets from 2000 to 2013 and provide an overview of price transmission between fourteen international reference prices and 268 domestic prices from fifty‐eight countries. The results confirm that international rice markets are heterogeneous and export prices for indica rice in Vietnam are linked to the largest number of rice markets worldwide. There is also evidence of changes in the dynamics of rice price transmission from international to domestic markets after 2008. Future studies on price transmission should consider international reference prices that are appropriate for different quality segments and groups of rice importers.

[Conclusions] All policy making, including for the agricultural sector, is of idiosyncratic nature and differs widely from country to country. However, due to its supra-national dimension the EU's Common Agricultural Policy is a very special case that is in no way even vaguely comparable to the agricultural policy regime in any other part of the world. The specificity of the CAP relates to several factors, including the historical origin, the process of decision making, the financing regime, and the global significance of the EU's agricultural sector. [.]

Applied general and partial equilibrium models are widely used tools for ex ante analysis of trade policy changes. However, simulation results seem to exhibit significant variation across publications, and the often criticised 'black box' character of applied trade models makes meaningful comparisons of simulation results very difficult. As a potential remedy, this paper presents a meta-analysis of simulation-based Doha round publications. The meta-regression explains simulated welfare changes as a function of model characteristics, base-data and policy experiments. Regression results show that a major share of the variation within the dependent variable is explained by the covariates, and estimated coefficients show plausible signs and magnitudes. However, results also reveal that many model-based studies lack systematic documentation of their experimental settings.

The literature that addresses the role of institutions in bilateral trade is extensive. However, research that links institutional quality to specific products and their different levels of value addition is lacking. In this study, we look into institutional quality, based on three indicators from the World Bank's world governance indicators, and its indicator-specific effects on bilateral coconut trade. In particular, we study coconut products with varying degrees of value addition. We use structural gravity models to measure how institutions affect the trade performance of the top 26 coconut producing countries to the top 15 importing economies over the years 1996–2016. Our results suggest that increased government effectiveness enhances trade of high-value products, whereas better voice and accountability scores decrease trade of coconut products with both levels of value addition. No clear trade effect is observed when two countries are more similar in each of the three indicators. We conclude that each indicator has different trade effects on each of the coconut product categories. We end by giving recommendations that will help to improve the coconut export performance in their respective countries and for future research.

The literature that addresses the role of institutions in bilateral trade is extensive. However, research that link institutional quality to specific products and their different levels of value addition is lacking. In this study, we look into institutional quality, based on three indicators from the World Bank, and its indicator-specific effects on bilateral coconut trade. In particular, we study coconut products with varying degrees of value-addition. We utilize structural gravity models to measure how institutions affect the trade performance of the top 26 coconut producing countries to the top 15 importing economies over the years 1996-2016. Our results show that increased voice and accountability reduce bilateral trade of both highvalue and low-value coconut products while government effectiveness increases trade flows of high value products. Better control of corruption decreases trade of coconut oil. Furthermore, similarities in the voice and accountability and government effectiveness indicators between trading partners decrease trade of coconut products on an aggregate level. We conclude that each indicator has different effects on each of the product categories. We end by giving recommendations for policymakers that will help to improve the coconut export performance in their respective countries.

Political instabilities and violent political conflict have in recent years risen substantially throughout the world. Especially in the Middle East and North Africa they have grown to decisive factors permanently challenging the livelihoods of millions. We assess whether and to what extent varying intensities of conflict impact economic activity in Palestine which has been subject to substantial violent political conflict for decades. In particular, we analyse the relationship between various intensity levels of political instability measured by conflict-caused fatalities and uncertainty of weekly food prices in the West Bank between 2004 and 2011 using a GARCH model. We consider four food commodities covering vegetables, fruits and animal products. Banana and milk prices are found not to show clustered volatility while onion and pear prices do. The impact of varying conflict intensities on weekly average prices appears to be modest. This might suggest that effects happen on a temporally and geographically more disaggregated scale. ; peerReviewed

[.] 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 Investitionen in der Landwirtschaft zu gewährleisten. Dieses Argument ist 20 Jahre nach der ersten Reform nicht mehr überzeugend, insbesondere angesichts der hohen Agrarpreise in den letzten fünf Jahren und der Überwälzung der Direktzahlungen an die Bodeneigentümer. Mit dem Konzept des Greenings verfolgt die Kommission das Ziel, 30% der Direktzahlungen als Gegenleistung für die Einhaltung konkreter Umweltauflagen zu gewähren. Nach dem Willen der Kommission soll deshalb nunmehr das Konzept des 'Greenings' als Begründung für die Fortführung des Systems der Direktzahlungen dienen. [.]