Influence of the Common Agricultural Policy and Heterogeneous Land Quality on Land Rent and Land Allocation. Factor Markets Working Paper No. 38, March 2013

Against the background of the current discussion about the EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP) after 2013, the question of the impact of government support on land prices is crucially important. Validation of the CAP’s success also hinges on a proper assessment of a choice of policy instruments. This study therefore has the objective of investigating on a theoretical basis the effects of different government support measures on land rental prices and land allocation. The different measures under consideration are the price support, area payments and decoupled single farm payments (SFPs) of the CAP. Our approach evaluates the potential impact of each measure based on a Ricardian land rent model with heterogeneous land quality and multiple land uses. We start with a simple model of one output and two inputs, where a Cobb-Douglas production technology is assumed between the two factors of land and non-land inputs. In a second step, an outside option is introduced. This outside option, as opposed to land use of the Ricardian type, is independent of land quality. The results show that area payments and SFPs become fully capitalised into land rents, whereas in a price support scheme the capitalisation depends on per-acreage productivity. Moreover, in a price support scheme and a historical model, the capitalisation is positively influenced by land quality. Both area payments and price supports influence land allocation across different uses compared with no subsidies, where the shift tends to be larger in an area payment scheme than in a price support scheme. By contrast, SFPs do not influence land allocation.

Defying the Treaty: The Influence of the Polish and Lithuanian Council Presidencies on the Development of the Eastern Partnership. EU Diplomacy Paper No. 6, October 2014

Many scholars now argue that the Treaty of Lisbon has removed the role and influence of the rotating Council Presidency in the domain of the European Union’s foreign affairs. This paper will, however, go beyond a superficial, treaty-based analysis of the influence of the post-Lisbon rotating Council Presidency and instead look at two primary, residual, informal Presidential roles, namely agenda-shaping and brokering. It will examine the extent to which these informal roles allowed the Polish and Lithuanian Council Presidencies of July to December 2011 and 2013 respectively to influence the development of the bilateral, multilateral and internal tracks of the Eastern Partnership. The paper will argue that the considerable influence of these rotating Presidencies defied the logic of the Lisbon Treaty, suggesting that the ‘golden age’ of this six-month position, whereby individual Member States pursue foreign policy issues of significant domestic interest at the European level, has not yet passed.

Analyser l’influence du syndicalisme agricole majoritaire: quelle utilité pour le modèle néo-corporatiste? Etude de cas à partir du «mini-paquet lait» = Analyze the influence of the majority agricultural trade unionism: what use to the neo-corporatist model? Case study from the "mini-milk package". Bruges Political Research Paper No. 35, August 2014

Cette recherche se propose de réfléchir sur la place des groupes d’intérêts dans le système politique de l’UE en partant de l’exemple de la filière lait. Dans un système généralement pluraliste, la PAC fait en effet figure de cas particulier puisqu’elle a fonctionné à partir des années 1960 sur une logique de co-gestion de la politique des marchés entre la Commission et la principale fédération agricole européenne, le Comité des Organisations Professionnelles agricoles (COPA) associé depuis 1962 au Comité Général de la Coopération agricole de l'Union européenne (COGECA). Néanmoins, du fait du processus de réforme de la PAC engagé depuis 1992, il paraît nécessaire d’analyser si la logique de co-gestion est remise en cause. Cette recherche conclue qu’il existe bien un rapport néo-corporatiste dans le secteur laitier, dans le sens où un acteur en particulier, le syndicat COPA-COGECA est parvenu à influencer de manière déterminante la procédure en obtenant de renforcer le pouvoir de négociation des producteurs sans revenir sur les réformes récentes de la PAC.

The Limited Influence of the European Union in Armenia and Azerbaijan: A Domestic Explanation. EU Diplomacy Paper 9/2015

This paper seeks to explain why the European Union (EU) has had limited influence in Armenia and Azerbaijan in the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). Combining approaches from external governance, norm diffusion and structural foreign policy, it offers an explanation based on domestic factors in the two countries: the political regime, state capacity, political structures, domestic incentives and the perceived legitimacy of EU rules. Although willingness to reform appears to exist in Armenia, such willingness remains constrained by the country’s vulnerable geopolitical location and high dependence on Russia. By contrast, none of the domestic preconditions for EU influence identified by the analytical framework were found in Azerbaijan. The author argues that the Eastern Partnership has not properly addressed the extent to which the clan structures feed into informal political practices and enforce the sustainability of an existing regime in both countries, and that, in addition, the EU has underestimated the multipolar environment which the two countries have to operate in, making it unlikely that the current policy can reach its objectives in Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The Valuation of Agricultural Land and the Influence of Government Payments. Factor Markets Working Paper No. 10, December 2011

This study gives an overview of the theoretical foundations, empirical procedures and derived results of the literature identifying determinants of land prices. Special attention is given to the effects of different government support policies on land prices. Since almost all empirical studies on the determination of land prices refer either to the net present value method or the hedonic pricing approach as a theoretical basis, a short review of these models is provided. While the two approaches have different theoretical bases, their empirical implementation converges. Empirical studies use a broad range of variables to explain land values and we systematise those into six categories. In order to investigate the influence of different measures of government support on land prices, a meta-regression analysis is carried out. Our results reveal a significantly higher rate of capitalisation for decoupled direct payments and a significantly lower rate of capitalisation for agri-environmental payments, as compared to the rest of government support. Furthermore, the results show that taking theoretically consistent land rents (returns to land) and including non-agricultural variables like urban pressure in the regression implies lower elasticities of capitalisation. In addition, we find a significant influence of the land type, the data type and estimation techniques on the capitalisation rate.