TY  - UNPB
ID  - orgprints14663
UR  - http://orgprints.org/14663/
A1  - Daugbjerg, C. 
A1  - Holloway, G. 
A1  - Tranter, R. 
TI  - Modeling the Impacts of Policy on Entry into Organic Farming:
Evidence from Danish-UK Comparisons, 1989-2007.
Y1  - 2008///
N2  - This paper analyzes organic farming entry decisions using a novel, missing-data
methodology and a piece-wise linear depiction of policy. Our primary goal is to
ascertain, from the available but limited information, whether Danish and UK policy
measures toward organic agriculture have had discernible impacts on participation.
Despite considerable interest in the growth of organic farming, both regionally and
globally, there has been little systematic analysis of such phenomena. Whilst analyses of
organic farming policy instruments have provided extensive and detailed reviews of
instruments applied, generally speaking, the spirit of those enquiries takes as datum that
organic policies have had the desired impacts. Yet such conjectures remain mostly
untested. Hence, there is a need to examine systematically whether there exist
relationships between the introduction of organic farming policies and the growth of the
organic food sector, and whether particular organic farming policy measures are more
effective than others. In this paper, we take a first step in this endeavor by undertaking
an econometric analysis of the relationship between organic farming policies in Denmark
and the UK during the period 1989-2007. Using two response variables ? the numbers of
farmers and growers converting to organic production and the total land area under
organic conversion ? we implement a simple, though robust, Bayesian methodology
which accounts formally for several idiosyncrasies of the sample, including missing
observations in the response variables and the stepwise-linear impacts of policy. The
Bayesian methodology evidences routine implementation of recent advances in Markov
Chain Monte Carlo methods ? Gibbs sampling and data augmentation, in particular ? and
leads to robust inferences about the nature and extent of the impacts of policy on entry
into organic agriculture. Extensions are discussed (276 words).
AV  - restricted
KW  - Organic farming policy measures; Denmark and the UK; robust Bayesian
inference.

ER  -