There is a widespread sense that over the last two decades firms have been decentralizing decisions to employees further down the managerial hierarchy. Economists have developed a range of theories to account for delegation, but there is less empirical evidence, especially across countries. This...

Assurance schemes (certifications and labels) are widespread in the agri-food sector. This paper reviews the landscape of existing schemes, and the evidence on whether labels change consumer behaviour, and whether assurance schemes achieve positive change on the farm. The impact of existing...

This paper provides an overview of agro-food value chains in the EU Outermost Regions (EU ORs). It assesses emerging trends, discusses opportunities and challenges, reviews the policy frameworks and tools that can strengthen the beneficial participation of EU ORs in international agro-food value...

The main objective of the book is to evaluate the effects of EU policy instruments that promote a stronger European dimension of the R&D base in the European Union. This objective can be split into a few specific objectives, which are defined as follows: • Evaluation of the impact of public...

We present a selective survey of the economic theory of intellectual property rights. After a brief description of the institutional framework, we discuss policy objectives and some basic welfare tradeoffs in intellectual property design. We consider the extent to which social objectives can be...