Investing in Bulgarian Agriculture Investir dans l’agriculture bulgare Investitionen in die bulgarische Landwirtschaft

Investing in Bulgarian Agriculture The Programme for European Development of Bulgaria has set agricultural development as a basis for economic growth. The first strategic objective of the Programme is to make agriculture an attractive industry and to guarantee a high standard of living for people working in the sector by stabilising and increasing their incomes. The priorities of the Bulgarian government regarding agriculture follow the priorities of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and we strictly adhere to the two pillars of the CAP. A Food Safety Agency is being established to guarantee the safety and increase the quality of food and a legislative base is being created to allow producers to supply directly to consumers thus enhancing market opportunities. Bulgaria is in the middle of the first programming period of the Rural Development Programme (2007–2013) and expectations of the programme are high. It has the largest budget in Bulgaria and the fund absorption rate of about 20 per cent is the highest in the country. Bulgarian government priorities are consistently focused on the goal of increasing the competitiveness of Bulgarian agriculture through technical and technological modernization of the sector and on the sustainable development and stabilization of rural areas under the conditions of EU membership.     

Institutional Market Power in Comté: Insights from a ‘Double Marginalisation’ Model

This article explores the economic efficiency of a horizontally and vertically coordinated industry where upstream producers are atomised, but downstream processors are few, explicitly considering participation incentives and allowing the coordinated industry to exert market power towards buyers. The model offers insight into the probable social impacts of the government‐sanctioned supply control scheme in place in the French Comté cheese market, suggesting it falls short of constituting a Pareto‐improvement compared with a laissez‐faire situation. More generally, our theoretical model provides guidance to identify instances where encouraging industry coordination may be socially desirable. We formally introduce the concept of ‘seller‐equivalent degree of overall market power’ of the separated industry, a market characteristic comprised of measurable or inferable parameters, the value of which is shown to determine the potential for Pareto improvements through industry integration.