Foundations of Agricultural Market Analysis and Agricultural Policy

Published continuously since 1981 the German Textbook "Grundzüge der landwirtschaftlichen Marktlehre" (Principles of agricutural market analysis and policy) has become the standard textbook for students in agriculture and in particular in agricultural economics in Germany and other German speaking countries. This book entitled 'Foundations of Agricultural Market Analysis and Agricultural Policy' is based on the fifth edition of the German textbook in 2016, though it includes various updates and extensions.

Part One of this book, "Foundations of Agricultural Market Analysis," provides the basis for analyzing the specifics of the agricultural sector. These specifics limit the application of plain neoclassical economics, but including institutional and behavioral economics help to bridge the gap between theory and the real world.

Part Two, "Agricultural Policy," reviews the role of agriculture in the achievement of specific agricultural policy objectives. Comparing free agricultural market developments and policy objectives confirms market failure. The existence of actual or perceived market failure explains the numerous policy instruments applied in the past and present in the agricultural policies of individual countries, as well as in the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU. The economic analysis presented in this book uses a general framework for policy evaluation that can be applied to any country. The second to last chapters focus on the EU; however, the EU experience can be of interest to other countries as well. The last chapter, Epilog, is very EU specific as it discusses the problem of the ongoing negotiations for the next seven years. Generally, the two parts of this book focus on the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, the experiences presented can serve as case studies for any non-EU country.