Post-communist Transformation in Bulgaria – Implications for Development of Agricultural Specialization and Farming Structures

This paper incorporates a new inter-disciplinary methodology of the New Institutional and Transaction Costs Economics, and examines pace, factors and modes for post-communist agricultural specialization and farming structures development in Bulgaria. Firstly, it outlines the framework for analysis of economic specialization in transitional agriculture. Next, it presents the specific Bulgarian model for farming transformation characterizing with restitution of farmland in real borders and original locations, physical distribution of assets of ancient public farms into individual shares, rapid liberalization of markets and prices, and lack of public support to agriculture. Third, it specify factors for evolution of new farm structures and specialization such as badly specified and enforced property rights; big institutional, market and behavioral uncertainty; high assets specificity and dependency; lack of managerial experience; low incentives for long-term investment; ineffective public interventions etc. Next, it demonstrates how these factors affect organization and specialization of farming in the country explaining the evolution of a huge subsistence and part-time farming, production cooperation at a large scale, unprecedented concentration of resources in few business farms, widespread use of informal and integrated modes etc. Fifth, it analyzes the impact of transition on farm structures and agricultural specialization through changes in structure and share of agricultural GDP and employment, and distribution of activities between different types of farms. Finally, it clarifies efficiency of and extend of specialization in dominating large business farms, production cooperatives, and numerous small-scale unregistered farms.agricultural specialization, farm governance, transaction costs, comparative institutional analysis, Bulgarian agriculture

Human nature and institutional analysis

This essay reviews some findings in cognition sciences and examines their consequences for the analysis of institutions. It starts by exploring how humans’ specialization in producing knowledge ensures our success in dominating the environment but also changes fast our environment. So fast that it did not give time to natural selection to adapt our biology, causing it to be potentially maladapted in important dimensions. A main function of institutions is therefore to fill the gap between the demands of our relatively new environment and our biology, still adapted to our ancestral environment as hunter-gatherers. Moreover, institutions are built with the available elements, which include our instincts. A deeper understanding of both aspects, their adaptive function and this recruitment of ancestral instincts, will add greatly to our ability to manage institutions.Evolution, biology, behavior, institutions

Management of chemical and biological risks in agri-food chain

Paper presents diverse modes of governance of chemical and biological risks in agri-food sector, assesses their efficiency, complementarities, and challenges, and suggests recommendations for public policies improvement. It defines governance as system of social order responsible for particular behavior of agents; specify various (institutions, market, private, public) mechanisms of risk governance and (natural, technological, behavioral etc.) factors of efficiency; and suggest a framework for analysis and improvement of risk governance. New opportunities for risks governance relate to: modernization of technologies and institutional environment; specialization, concentration, and integration; “willingness to pay” and consumers and media involvement; national and transnational cooperation. Risk management challenges are associated with: new threats and risks; separation of risk-creation from risk-taking; vulnerability of mass production, distribution and consumption; high adaptation and compliance costs; unequal norms, implementing capability, policies and private strategies; public failures; and informal sector. Policies improvement is to incorporate governance issues taking into account type of threats and risks, specific factors, and comparative benefits and cost (including third-party, transacting, time); employ more hybrid modes introducing and enforcing new rights, and supporting private and collective initiatives; give greater support to multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research on factors, modes, and impacts of risk-governance.risk management; market, private, public governance; agri-food chain

Towards a Definition of Role-related Concepts for Business Modeling

Abstract—While several role-related concepts play an\ud important role in business modeling, their definitions,\ud relations, and use differ greatly between languages, papers,\ud and reports. Due to this, the knowledge captured by models is\ud not transferred correctly, and models are incomparable. In this\ud paper, we provide a meta-model and definitions for several\ud role-related concepts based on the practice of existing modeling\ud languages and ontological analysis. This forms a basis for\ud creating comparable, formal business models, which enable\ud further enterprise engineering, in a repeatable wa

Needs, Modes and Efficiency of Economic Organizations and Public Interventions in Agriculture

There has been a fundamental development in theory and understanding of market, private, collective and public organizations in recent years. This paper incorporates achievements of the interdisciplinary New Institutional and Transaction Costs Economics (combining Economics, Organization, Law, Sociology, Behavioral and Political Sciences) and suggests a framework for assessing the needs and efficiency of economic organizations and public interventions in agriculture. Our new approach includes: study of farm and other agrarian organizations as a governing rather than production structure; assessment of comparative efficiency of alternative market, contract, internal, and hybrid modes of governance; analysis of level of transaction costs and their institutional (distribution and enforcement of de-facto rights between individuals, groups, organizations), behavioral (agents preferences, ability, bounded rationality, tendency for opportunism, risk aversion, trust), dimensional (frequency, uncertainty, assets specificity, and appropriability of transactions), natural, and technological factors; determination of effective horizontal and vertical boundaries of farms and other agrarian organizations; specification of the economic role of government and the needs for public interventions in agrarian sector; assessment of comparative of alternative forms of public involvement in agrarian sector (partnership, regulation, taxation, assistance, provision, in house organization, fundamental property rights modernization). The paper provides new powerful tools for understanding the agrarian organizations and their efficiency, and for improvement of public policies, collective actions, farming and business strategies, and academic analyses in that important sector of social life.market, private and public modes of governance, efficiency of farms and agrarian organizations, agricultural policies, transaction costs, New Institutional Economics

Specialization and Variety in Repetitive Tasks: Evidence from a Japanese Bank

Sustaining operational productivity in the completion of repetitive tasks is critical to many organizations' success. Yet research points to two different work-design related strategies for accomplishing this goal: specialization to capture the benefits of repetition or variety to keep workers motivated and allow them to learn. In this paper, we investigate how these two strategies may bring different benefits within the same day and across days. Additionally, we examine the impact of these strategies on both worker productivity and workers' likelihood of staying at a firm. For our empirical analyses, we use two and a half years of transaction data from a Japanese bank's home loan application processing line. We find that over the course of a single day, specialization, as compared to variety, is related to improved worker productivity. However, when we examine workers' experience across days we find that variety, or working on different tasks, helps improve worker productivity. We also find that workers with higher variety are more likely to stay at the firm. Our results identify new ways to improve operational performance through the effective allocation of work.Job Design, Learning, Productivity, Specialization, Turnover, Variety, Work Fragmentation

Natural resources conservation management and strategies in agriculture

This paper suggests a holistic framework for assessment and improvement of management strategies for conservation of natural resources in agriculture. First, it incorporates an interdisciplinary approach (combining Economics, Organization, Law, Sociology, Ecology, Technology, Behavioral and Political Sciences) and presents a modern framework for assessing environmental management and strategies in agriculture including: specification of specific “managerial needs” and spectrum of feasible governance modes (institutional environment; private, collective, market, and public modes) of natural resources conservation at different level of decision-making (individual, farm, eco-system, local, regional, national, transnational, and global); specification of critical socio-economic, natural, technological, behavioral etc. factors of managerial choice, and feasible spectrum of (private, collective, public, international) managerial strategies; assessment of efficiency of diverse management strategies in terms of their potential to protect diverse eco-rights and investments, assure socially desirable level of environmental protection and improvement, minimize overall (implementing, third-party, transaction etc.) costs, coordinate and stimulate eco-activities, meet preferences and reconcile conflicts of individuals etc. Second, it presents evolution and assesses the efficiency of diverse management forms and strategies for conservation of natural resources in Bulgarian agriculture during post-communist transformation and EU integration (institutional, market, private, and public), and evaluates the impacts of EU CAP on environmental sustainability of farms of different juridical type, size, specialization and location. Finally, it suggests recommendations for improvement of public policies, strategies and modes of intervention, and private and collective strategies and actions for effective environmental protection

Supermarkets, Modern Supply Chains, and the Changing Food Policy Agenda

There is great interest among policy makers in how to influence the behavior of supermarkets in ways that serve the interests of important groups in society, especially small farmers and the owners of traditional, small-scale food wholesale and retail facilities. Two broader issues are also important: (1) finding a way for food prices to “internalize” the full environmental costs of production and marketing; and (2) finding a way for supermarkets to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem, to the health problems generated by an “affluent” diet and lifestyle. There are concerns over the growing concentration in global food retailing and the potential market power that concentration implies. But the evidence of fierce competition at the retail level, and the high contestability for food consumers’ dollars, have kept this issue in the background. The ultimate impact of supermarkets in developing countries will be on the level and distribution of improved welfare for consumers. What happens to small farmers, traditional traders and mom-and-pop shops will be factors in both the size of welfare gains and their distribution, but many other factors will also come into play. Our judgment on the impact of the supermarket revolution must incorporate all of those factors. This paper places the supermarket debate in the broader evolution of food policy analysis, which is a framework for integrating household, market, macro and trade issues as they affect hunger and poverty. Increasingly, supermarkets provide the institutional linkages across these issues.Food policy; agricultural diversification; structural transformation; poverty

Internationalisation of Innovation: Why Chip Design Moving to Asia

This paper will appear in International Journal of Innovation Management, special issue in honor of Keith Pavitt, (Peter Augsdoerfer, Jonathan Sapsed, and James Utterback, guest editors), forthcoming. Among Keith Pavitt's many contributions to the study of innovation is the proposition that physical proximity is advantageous for innovative activities that involve highly complex technological knowledge But chip design, a process that creates the greatest value in the electronics industry and that requires highly complex knowledge, is experiencing a massive dispersion to leading Asian electronics exporting countries. To explain why chip design is moving to Asia, the paper draws on interviews with 60 companies and 15 research institutions that are doing leading-edge chip design in Asia. I demonstrate that "pull" and "policy" factors explain what attracts design to particular locations. But to get to the root causes that shift the balance in favor of geographical decentralization, I examine "push" factors, i.e. changes in design methodology ("system-on-chip design") and organization ("vertical specialization" within global design networks). The resultant increase in knowledge mobility explains why chip design - that, in Pavitt's framework is not supposed to move - is moving from the traditional centers to a few new specialized design clusters in Asia. A completely revised and updated version has been published as: " Complexity and Internationalisation of Innovation: Why is Chip Design Moving to Asia?," in International Journal of Innovation Management, special issue in honour of Keith Pavitt, Vol. 9,1: 47-73.