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The world is constantly adapting and our way of consuming is changing. Our environment has become globalized over the last two centuries. Food production is mainly carried out using techniques that do not respect biodiversity and the health of the population, all managed by multinational companies. Indeed, we know less and less about the components of our plates. This leads to a loss of quality and confidence when buying food.

Faced with these observations, some actors are becoming more and more aware that we must change our way of consuming and farming. Therefore, in recent years, some have decided to create alternative production methods and sell their products through a more direct marketing channel. By reducing intermediaries, these initiatives allow for greater transparency in both food and economic terms. Social and territorial ties are thus reconsidered. And above all, the added value goes directly to producers or farmers and no longer to large companies. 

It is in this context that this research is part of. It aims to understand why the current food market is not optimal and whether the theory of Market Failure can be fully validated by showing the interest of these short food supply chains initiatives. After further defining the concept of short food supply chains, we will show that they are the obstacles that exist for the population to embark on this food transition. We will discover what key factors need to be strengthened to encourage consumers to use these initiatives. 

Then, through a survey and observations over a month, this study aims to understand by which factors to engage the consumer in these short foods supply chains initiatives? What is their current purchasing behavior? What are their obstacles and motivations to consume locally? What would increase confidence in the purchase transaction? What effort should be made by these alternatives to encourage the citizen? Are they legitimate and sustainable concerning marketing?

Short food supply chains, Food transition, Citizen engagement, Social marketing, Agriculture, Market failures, Confidence, Belgium --- Sciences économiques & de gestion > Economie sociale

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This paper examines constraints to adoption of new technologies in the context of hillside irrigation schemes in Rwanda. It leverages a plot-level spatial regression discontinuity design to produce 3 key results. First, irrigation enables dry season horticultural production, which boosts on-farm cash profits by 70 percent. Second, adoption is constrained: access to irrigation causes farmers to substitute labor and inputs away from their other plots. Eliminating this substitution would increase adoption by at least 21 percent. Third, this substitution is largest for smaller households and wealthier households. This result can be explained by labor market failures in a standard agricultural household model.

Agricultural Sector Economics --- Agriculture --- Horticulture --- Irrigation --- Irrigation and Drainage --- Labor Market --- Labor Markets --- Market Failures --- Social Protections and Labor --- Technology Adoption --- Water Resources

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After long suffering from benign neglect if not outright contempt, industrial policy is almost fashionable again. The global financial and economic crisis known as the Great Recession has forced researchers and policy makers to confront the reality that market forces alone generally do not lead to (constrained) Pareto-efficient outcomes. Many important national and global policy objectives (equality of opportunity for all citizens, financial stability and inclusion, environmental protection and pollution control, et cetera) are simply often not reflected in market prices and not achieved by markets on their own. In addition to traditional justification for industrial policies-dealing with externalities and coordination issues-economists and policy makers now acknowledge the need to foster learning at the level of each economic agent and throughout society and the ultimate responsibility that the state must bear in that crucial process. But converting the now widely accepted theoretical principles of industrial policy into practical frameworks for concrete government action is indeed a daunting task everywhere and perhaps more so in the African context where the institutional underpinnings of effective government are often not as strong as one might have hoped. This essay highlights the intellectual foundations and broad principles of good industrial policy, outlines the contours of the policy agenda, and fleshes out the lessons learned. It argues that there has been substantial progress on the understanding and acceptance of industrial policy and that Africa could benefit enormously from it and from the unprecedented new opportunities brought to light by a multipolar world.

Climate Change Economics --- Economic Theory & Research --- Environmental Economics & Policies --- Industrial Policy --- Learning Society --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Market Failures --- Policy Neutrality --- Population Policies --- Public Sector Corruption & Anticorruption Measures

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Over the last two centuries, the emergence of new technologies has profoundly changed the
way food is produced, distributed and consumed. Shifting from an agricultural to an
agribusiness status, the food system comprises nowadays a multitude of actors which are highly
dependent on one another with farmers being the least fortunate. Upwards, the latter depend on
a few multinational company owning the seeds and inputs essential to their production.
Downwards, a few powerful processers and distributors put pressure on their prices and impose
more and more constraints on them.
But not only farmers suffer from this evolution. The opacity of the whole food supply chain
leaves consumers unaware of the food they eat and conventional farming leads to the
destruction of biodiversity and environment as a whole.
Thus, a few actors decide to take actions to counter the undesirable effects generated by the
food system. By opting for alternative production methods – such as organic farming – and by
distributing food directly to final consumers, producers can free themselves from the companies
upwards and recoup the added-value they had lost to the benefit of the powerful companies
downwards.
In a first phase, this thesis introduces the problems of the food sector explaining them through
the concept of Market Failures. Then, the concept of Short Food Supply Chains is defined and
the organizations falling within its scope are listed and classified.
In a second phase, by carrying out a survey in the province of Liège (Belgium), this work seeks
to appreciate the diversity of these organizations. What activities do they carry out? What forms
do they take? What are the profiles of their creators and members? How do they finance
themselves? Then, the link between the profile of the members and creators of these
organizations, their motivations – the problems of the food sector they address – and their
practices – the actions they take to tackle those problems – is examined. Finally, the consistency
between the actions they take and the failures against which they claim to fight is reviewed.

Agriculture --- Agribusiness --- Market failures --- Power imbalance --- Food sovereignty --- Organic farming --- Agroecology --- Short food supply chains --- Social enterprise --- Belgium --- Sciences économiques & de gestion > Economie sociale --- Sciences du vivant > Agriculture & agronomie --- Sciences économiques & de gestion > Production, distribution & gestion de la chaîne logistique --- Sciences du vivant > Sciences des denrées alimentaires

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The joint determination of aggregate economic growth and distributional change has been studied empirically from at least three different perspectives. A macroeconomic approach that relies on cross-country data on poverty, inequality, and growth rates has generated some interesting stylized facts about the correlations between these variables, but has not shed much light on the underlying determinants. "Meso-" and microeconomic approaches have fared somewhat better. The microeconomic approach, in particular, builds on the observation that growth, changes in poverty, and changes in inequality are simply different aggregations of information on the incidence of economic growth along the income distribution. This paper reviews the evolution of attempts to understand the nature of growth incidence curves, from the statistical decompositions associated with generalizations of the Oaxaca-Blinder method, to more recent efforts to generate "economically consistent" counterfactuals, drawing on structural, reduced-form, and computable general equilibrium models.

Achieving Shared Growth --- Counterfactual --- Distributional dynamics --- Economic growth --- Economic Theory & Research --- Higher inequality --- Household income --- Household survey --- Income --- Income distribution --- Income dynamics --- Income inequality --- Inequality --- Insurance --- Insurance markets --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Market failures --- Political economy --- Poor --- Poverty dynamics --- Poverty line --- Poverty measurement --- Poverty Reduction --- Public spending --- Rural Poverty Reduction --- Services & Transfers to Poor