Studying agrarian transition in more than 25 countries from Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and East Asia, this book is the first effort to analyze the economics and politics of the reforms in agriculture by comparing the reform processes, their causes and their effects across this vast region.

Johan F.M. Swinnen is Professor of development economics and Director of the LICOS Center for Transition Economics at the University of Leuven (KUL) in Belgium, a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels, and Coordinator of the European Network of Agricultural and Rural Policy Research Institutes (ENARPRI). He has been lead economist at the World Bank and an Economic Advisor at the European Commission. He has also acted as consultant and advisor to other international institutions including EBRD, OECD, FAO, and IFAD and many East European governments.
Scott Rozelle is Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics in the University of California, Davis. Dr. Rozelle received his B.Sc. from UC, Berkely, M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Cornell University. Before moving to the University of California in 1998, he was an Assistant Professor in the Food Research Institute and Department of Economics at Stanford University. He is the U.C. Davis 2000 Chancellor Fellow and is the chair of the Board of Academic Advisors of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy.

• Preface


• 1: Introduction


• The economics of agricultural transition


• 2: Patterns of transition


• 3: A model of agricultural transition


• 4: Policy reforms


• 5: The effects of the reforms


• The political economy of agricultural transition


• 6: Basic determinants of reform strategies


• 7: Why did the Communist party reform in China, but not in the Soviet Union?


• 8: Determining the pace of market liberalization


• 9: The political economy of property rights reform and farm restructuring


• Conclusions, lessons and new developments


• 10: Conclusions


• 11: Lessons of agricultural transition


• 12: The second decade of transition