Agriculture, Food and the TTIP: Possibilities and Pitfalls. CEPS Special Report No. 99/December 2014. TTIP Series No. 3 and Paper No. 1 in the CEPS-CTR project “TTIP in the balance’’

Progress in agriculture and food issues in the TTIP talks will largely be determined by the level of ambition in the negotiations as a whole. If ambitions are modest, a low-level agreement could probably be reached that includes some limited commitments on agricultural market access and food regulations. These could include promises of mutual support in the area of opening up agricultural markets through the WTO and of further Transatlantic cooperation in trying to resolve conflicts over food regulations. Bolder ambitions would allow more scope for tackling the difficult problems, though at the cost of time. It would be unfortunate if the opportunity were not taken to make some significant progress in removing some longstanding irritants in the area of agricultural policy and food regulations: this is where the economic gains are likely to be significant and the spill-overs useful. This paper argues the case that it is worthwhile making the effort to secure a constructive and imaginative agreement on agriculture and food regulations in the TTIP. A fairly detailed suggestive list of potential sub-deals in agro-food, supported by the analysis in the paper, is the most concrete one of a series of policy conclusions

What prospects for transport infrastructure and impacts on growth in southern and eastern Mediterranean countries? MEDPRO Report No. 3, February 2013

Lack of adequate infrastructure is a significant inhibitor to increased trade of the countries of the Mediterranean region. Bringing their transport infrastructure to standards comparable with countries of a similar per capita GDP will be costly but worthwhile. We compare the current quantities of six types of transport infrastructure with international benchmarks, and estimate the additional quantities needed to reach the benchmarks. We also estimate the cost of that infrastructure and express it as a percentage of GDP. Finally we make tentative estimates of how much trade might be generated and how this might impact on GDP. All the estimates are made for 11 southern and eastern Mediterranean countries (SEMCs) under four scenarios. The greatest need for additional infrastructure is for airport passenger terminals (between 52% and 56%), whereas the least is for more unpaved roads (between 7% and 13%). The investment (including maintenance) cost would be between 0.9% of GDP and 2.4% of GDP, although the investments in some countries would be between 1.4% and 4.5% of GDP. The impact on non-oil international trade would be substantial, but with differences between imports and exports. The overall trade balance of the 11 countries would be an improvement of between 5.4% and 17.2%, although some countries would continue to have a negative balance. A final assessment is made of the benefit ratio between the increase in GDP and the cost of transport investment. This varies between about 3 and 8, an indication of the high return to be expected from increased investment in transport infrastructure.

Productivity and Credit Constraints: Firm-Level Evidence from Propensity Score Matching. Factor Markets Working Paper No. 3, September 2011

Drawing on a unique, farm-level panel dataset with 37,409 observations and employing a matching estimator, this paper analyses how farm access to credit affects farm input allocation and farm efficiency in the Central and Eastern European transition countries. We find that farms are asymmetrically credit constrained with respect to inputs. Farm use of variable inputs and capital investment increases up to 2.3% and 29%, respectively, per €1,000 of additional credit. Our estimates also suggest that farm access to credit increases total factor productivity up to 1.9% per €1,000 of additional credit, indicating that an improvement in access to credit results in an adjustment in the relative input intensities on farms. This finding is further supported by a negative effect of better access to credit on labour, suggesting that these two are substitutes. Interestingly, farms are found not to be credit constrained with respect to land.