Russia’s Agro-Food Sector: Towards Truly Functioning Markets

1 Introduction and Overview.- 1 Introduction and Overview.- 2 Where Does Russia Stand?.- 2.1 A Comparison of Agrarian Transition in Russia, China, and Eastern Europe.- 2.2 Russia’s Position within the CIS: A Cross-country Comparison.- 2.3 Russia’s Agro-food Sector: State of the Art.- 3 Policy and Macroeconomics.- 3.1 Sectoral Agricultural Policies and Estimates of PSEs for Russia in the Transition Period.- 3.2 Inflation and Exchange Rate Policies.- 3.3 The Role of the Agro-food Sector in the Macroeconomy: General Equilibrium Effects.- 4 Spatial Market Integration.- 4.1 Economic Consequences of Russia’s Internal Border.- 4.2 Regional (Dis-)Integration of Russia’s Agro-food Markets.- 4.3 The Effects of Disintegration: Regional Grain Production and Marketing in Russia 1992-1995.- 5 Trade.- 5.1 Russia’s Agro-food Trade and Trade Agreements.- 5.2 Russia’s Bilateral Agricultural Trade: First Results of a Partial Equilibrium Analysis.- 6 Subsistence Production and Consumption of Food.- 6.1 Poverty, Subsistence Production, and Consumption of Food in Russia: Policy Implications.- 6.2 The Role of Household Plots in Rural Areas.- 7 Evolving Food Marketing Chain.- 7.1 Effectiveness of Competition in Russian Food Markets.- 7.2 Vertical Integration in the Russian Agro-food Sector.- 7.3 New Players in Russia’s Food Marketing Chain.- 8 Institutional Issues in Rural Areas.- 8.1 Credit Markets in Rural Russia.- 8.2 Building Market Information Systems for the Agro-food Sector.- 9 Institutional Issues at the Farm-Level.- 9.1 Decollectivization and Restructuring of Farms.- 9.2 Organization of Russia’s Large Scale Farms.- 9.3 Agricultural Enterprise Restructuring in Russia, 1991-95: an Efficiency Analysis.- 10 Synthesis.- 10.1 Policy Conclusions: An Agenda.- 10.2 ResearchImplications: Beyond Transition.- Contributing authors.

`The book is well edited. Although most of the authors are not native English speakers, the papers are well written. ... The book is an informative, thourough and well-prepared review of the status of Russia's agro-food economy in the late 1990s. Its content and style make it accessible to anyone interested in transition agriculture.'
European Review of Agricultural Economics, 27:4 (2000)
`Everyone working in this area should study this more closely. Moreover, the book can be used as an excellent reference book for teaching a course on `transition economics''
Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture, 40:4 (2001)

Joachim von Braun is Director of ZEF.