Summary Covid‐19 placed unprecedented stresses on food supply chains. Farms faced bottlenecks for some inputs, notably seasonal labour. Processing was disrupted by labour shortages and shutdowns, especially in meat processing. Air freight, important for fruits and vegetables, was severely disrupted. Demand from restaurants and food service collapsed, while retail food demand surged. Yet supply chains in the developed world have been remarkably resilient to date. Store shelves were replenished as stockpiling behaviour subsided and as supply chain actors expanded operating hours, increased staff, simplified the product range and found alternative suppliers. This rapid recovery was facilitated by policy decisions to reduce border waiting times, to streamline certification procedures and to relax regulations on trade in food. Importantly, policymakers have so far mostly avoided a repeat of the mistakes of the 2007–2008 food price crisis, which was greatly exacerbated by export bans. Some bottlenecks remain, and there may be new supply risks as Covid‐19 spreads in Latin America. Overall, the biggest risk to food security is not food availability, but consumers’ loss of income. Safety nets and food assistance are essential to avoid an increase in hunger, especially in developing countries.

Over the past decades, the world has witnessed an unprecedented growth in global value chains, propelled by increasingly demanding quality standards. These trends lead to concerns about the impact of value chains on development and poverty and about the possible protectionist nature of quality standards in rich countries. This book offers the first integrated theoretical analysis of the economic and political factors which determine the level of quality standards, as well as their economic effects along the value chain. Using realistic assumptions motivated by empirical research, the theoretical framework in this book makes it possible to study the efficiency effects as well as the distributional consequences of one of the most striking evolutions affecting global trade and development today.

This paper provides an overview and analysis of wine regulations in an international and historical comparative perspective. Wine is an excellent sector to study government interventions because for centuries wine markets have been subject to many government regulations that differ greatly within and between countries. Wine consumption taxes, for example, range from zero in some countries to more than 100% in others. The European Union has extensive quantity and quality regulations for wine, while other major producers such as Australia and the United States are much less regulated. After a general overview of current regulations and historical evolutions, we analyze three key wine regulations in more detail: consumption taxes, planting rights, and geographical indications. Most wine regulations reveal a tension between the public interest and vested private interests.

The merger of Dow and DuPont, the acquisition of Syngenta by ChemChina, and the acquisition of Monsanto by Bayer have recently reshaped the global seed and biotech industry and caused concern about growing market concentration. This review documents market concentration in seed and agricultural biotech markets and discusses its causes and impacts. The available evidence suggests that concentration in seed markets varies strongly by crop and by country, while markets for biotech traits are considerably more concentrated. Complementarities between seed, biotech, and crop protection chemicals explain much of the observed structural changes in the industry, and new complementarities may be emerging with digital agriculture. Although growing concentration might in theory lead to higher prices and less innovation, evidence on this is currently limited; this tendency is also in part offset by the remedies imposed by competition authorities. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Resource Economics, Volume 12 is October 5, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractRetailers' private standards are increasingly important in addressing consumer concerns about safety, quality and social and environmental issues. Empirical evidence shows that these private standards are frequently more stringent than their public counterparts. This article develops a political economy model that may contribute to explaining this stylized fact. We show that if producers exercise their political power to persuade the government to impose a lower public standard, retailers may apply their market power to install a private standard at a higher level than the public one, depending on several factors.