The author systematically examines one of the important issues of information — establishing the market price. He introduces the concept of «search» — where a buyer wanting to get a better price, is forced to question sellers. The article deals with various aspects of finding the necessary information.

Economics of Information

統計年鑑 = Statistical yearbook

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses transaction costs, risk aversion, and the choice of contractual arrangements. Every transaction involves a contract, and the transactions conducted in the marketplace entail outright or partial transfers of property rights among individual contracting parties. The contractual arrangements through which these transfers are negotiated are several and varied. The chapter presents a theory that states that economic efficiency is the same under various land tenure arrangements subject to the constraint of private property rights. Although transaction costs exist in the real world, the theory enables the understanding of much of the farming behavior. However, the presence of a variety of contractual arrangements under the same constraint of competition poses the question of the choice of these arrangements. If a firm can increase efficiency in production by employing productive resources of more than one resource owner, a contract to combine the resources will be obtained. The formation of the contract involves partial transfers of property rights in one form or another, such as leasing, hiring, or mortgaging.

Transaction Costs, Risk Aversion, and the Choice of Contractual Arrangements

Dependency of organic farms on direct payments in selected EU member states: today and tomorrow

In some cases spot markets failure to govern to whole or a part of the marketing channel effectively and contractual relations are gaining more importance. It is especially true in case of agricultural markets, since these markets became more differentiated and market players are vulnerable in most of the cases. Examination of Hungarian dairy sector is an actual issue, so that one could understand how contractual systems work in the situation when crises appear thanks to governance insufficiency. Our research’s aims are to present a theoretically structured framework of contracting arrangements of milk producers based on Transaction Cost Economics’ (TCE) predictions and economics of contracting and an empirical analysis of the key determinants of governance structure between farmers and dairy processors in Hungary. The source of the research is a theoretical argument based partly on review of Hungarian and international literature on relevant market channels, economics of contracting and governance structures. These gave the theoretical determinants of testable prepositions. In the framework of a postal survey in the second quarter of 2005 we carried out a survey among milk producers. A total of 300 questionnaires containing closed and open questions were sent out for milk producers, 65 of them could have been evaluated. The results have been structured, electronically converted for applying SPSS-software. The data base has been analysed by employing multivariate techniques (cluster analysis, linear regression, multidimensional scaling, etc). First, to be able to decide the number of clusters, we applied a hierarchical clustering. The formation of starting clusters was made by giving the number of the future groups which based on hierarchical cluster method and dendrogram. Hence asset specific investment, price determination and bargaining power proved to be significant in dividing the cases into three groups focusing on governance structure. We revealed the main characteristics of clusters focusing on con-tracting attributes. Groups’ means comparison obtains the result that there is no significant difference in partner change, neither in the whole sample nor in the sub-groups. Unlike from this, the reasons for selling to a particular buyer are different in the clusters, the most important factors are reliability, valid contract and the ones based on geographic reasons. The variables mentioned above were suitable for further investigations, so with the help of linear regression we attempted to see their effect on the contract period. Taking into consideration the t-values of the variables, neither asset specific investment and bargaining power, nor price determination have role in the explanation of contract period. Since the variables applied in the whole survey measure same theoretical concepts, we had the possibility to reduce their number by multidimensional scaling. The aim of this scaling is to gain information about the differences among the respondents reducing the dimensions of the variables. The goodness of fit was good in case of three and two dimensions, so we found that the six-dimensional space can be reduced into two or three dimensions without giving up the differences among cases.

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Vertical coordination by contracts in agribusiness: an empirical research in the hungarian dairy sector

This volume of proceedings, available both as hard copy and pdf , is a compilation of selected contributions to the IAMO Forum 2005, which will be held in Halle (Saale), Germany, at the Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe from June 16-18, 2005. CONTENTS: Agricultural and food markets in Central and Eastern Europe: An introduction; Stephan Brosig, Heinrich Hockmann. Agricultural markets in CEE - An overview; Jozsef Popp. Regoverning agrifood markets in CEEC - Poland's pork and apple markets; Jerzy Wilkin, Malgorzta Juchniewicz, Dominika Milczarek. Regoverning markets in the Hungarian dairy sector; Imre Ferto, Csaba Forgacs, Aniko Juhasz, Gyongyi Kurthy. Analysis of competitiveness, economic efficiency and distortions in the Estonian milk sector; Piret Hein. Building sustainable supply chains: The role of institutions; Jill E. Hobbs. How effective is the invisible hand on technological and institutional change and the reduction of transaction costs in the food sector? Ernst-August Nuppenau. How effective is the visible hand of the government in stabilising the wheat and flour price relation in Ukraine? Bernhard Brummer, Sergiy Zorya. Marketing margins and price transmission on the Hungarian pork market; Lajos Zoltan Bakucs, Imre Ferto. Slovenian retailing market structures, retail prices, and size of marketing margins for food staples; Stefan Bojnec. Scarcity and preferences (Data Envelopment Analysis of Moscow region corporate farms); Nikolay Svetlov. Buying or renting in? Selling or renting out? Exploring contract choice on the Polish land market; Annette Hurrelmann. The organisation of buyer - Supplier relations in the food chain: The case of the German fruit processing industry and Polish farmers; Kai Maack. Supply Chain Networks: Analysis based on strategic management theories and institutional economics; Jon H. Hanf. Dynamics of labour market participation: What drives Chinese farmers into and out of off-farm employment? Thomas Glauben, Thomas Herzfeld, Xiaobing Wang. Market channels and commercial orientation in Romania; Borbala Balint. Land reform and the development of agricultural land markets in Russia; Zvi Lerman, Natalya Shagaida. Public quality schemes - Helping ensure well-functioning agri-food markets in Central and East European countries? Eckhard Benner. Competition, market power and antimonopoly policy: A Hayekian perspective; Jurgen Wandel. An ex-ante analysis of a minimum price system for Ukraine; Oleg Nivyevs'ki, Arnim Kuhn

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How Effective is the Invisible Hand? Agricultural and Food Markets in Central and Eastern Europe

Analysing markets as organisations governed by a network of relational contracts that establish rules for market participants increases our understanding of exchange processes. On the basis of three land market case studies in Poland, it is shown that market rules are shaped by the identity as well as constellation of actors and are designed to serve the common objectives of the members of the organisation “market” by decreasing transaction costs and protecting group interests.

/pdf/analysing-agricultural-land-markets-as-organisations-an-20loiotz52.pdf

Analysing Agricultural Land Markets as Organisations : an Empirical Study in Poland

Land markets have received a considerable amount of attention in economic literature. Since the treatment of the topic covers various approaches, areas, and questions, it seems desirable to attempt an overview of the results. This paper devises a way in which to present a complete picture of the land market by drawing together the various contributions. The first step is to establish a method by which a market in its entirety can be defined. It is suggested that the application of Oliver Williamson's "Four levels of social analysis" is an appropriate approach to be used in this endeavour. In the second step, the contributions to land market research are reviewed, according to Williamson's scheme, within four broad categories: (1) embeddedness, (2) institutional environment, (3) governance and (4) resource allocation. The topics covered include cropshare tenancy, land titling and registration, communal land ownership, farmland policies, credit access and land reform. The paper closes with some proposals for further research and a discussion of the value of the approach used.

https://ecsocman.hse.ru/data/492/658/1219/137-053-urrelmann.pdf

How to Approach a Market? A Theoretical Concept for Defining and Describing Land Markets

In this paper agricultural land markets are regarded as organisations, which allows to take the effect of the social embeddedness of exchange into account. The markets-as organizations approach suggests that markets are governed by an internal "constitution" containing rules on dissemination of information, control procedures and sanctioning mechanisms that provide advantages to members. The design of the market constitution is believed to be strongly influenced by the constellation of actors and their characteristics. In order to investigate the validity of this assumption the study chooses a comparative approach that analyses the content of land market rules in settings with different actor constellations and tries to find out why they have been established in this way. Both qualitative and quantitative data collected in three village case studies and a survey in two structurally different regions of Poland is used. The results underline that the internal constitution of the organisation "land market" is designed to serve members' interests by decreasing transaction costs and protecting community welfare and also support the expectation that the rules differ according to actor constellations.

Annette Hurrelmann

Papers

How Effective is the Invisible Hand? Agricultural and Food Markets in Central and Eastern Europe

Analysing Agricultural Land Markets as Organisations : an Empirical Study in Poland

How to Approach a Market? A Theoretical Concept for Defining and Describing Land Markets

Analysing Agricultural Land Markets as Organisations: An Empirical Study in Poland