Objective
The aims of the project are : - Identify, compare and explain the modes of organisation implemented by producers in the food chains to drive different quality signals. Economic policy oriented towards
(i) competition,
(ii) consumers information and protection.
Our finding will clarify an issue not covered by the 1992 European legislation which concerns official certification of products of particular origin (PDO, PGI). Such a legal protection for the producers is limited. The use of these legal facilities has encountered difficulties when confronted with the European Union competition law which prohibit concerted actions between prcducers in that they could restrict competition. Producers collective organisations and co-operation are therefore threatened. We think that such a situation is due to the fact that the 1962 regulation does not take into acccunt producers' organisation modes which are specific to the use of these quality signals, especially when collective.
The questions are important for three reasons :
(i) the scope of policy quality may be restricted by competition policy,
(ii) collective organisations of producers are subject to legal insecurity,
(iii) for the consumers, the credibility of quality signals is threatened if the organisation of producers is weak.
At the core of this research project is the issue of the economic efficiency of modes of organisation set up by economic agents to drive their quality strategies. The project aims to answer three major questions: the credibility of quality signals for consumers ? Signals ? Policy ? Two approaches will be used for the research work : -the development of appropriate economic instruments, which will allcw the use of an homogeneous theoretical framework common to all the researchers collaborating in the research project. Transaction Cost Economics will be used as the central tool of investigation. Analysis of quality strategies to vertical or horizontal organizational arrangements covering seven European countries (France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain) in three different agro-food sectors (processed meat, cheese, fresh fruit and vegetable). The participation of a large number of countries with different agro-food tradition is required to cover a representative sample of :
(i) the complete range of quality strategies ;
(ii) the particular economic forms of organisation which are supporting the use of these strategies. Such variety is also necessary to analyse the influence of the institutional environment on the choice and the working of these alternative forms of organisation. The threephases of the project are :
(1) development of the methodology and implementaticn of the project structure ;
(2) case studies and empirical investigations ;
(3) sector and strategy quality comparisons, synthesis, final summary and recommendations.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomics
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturehorticulturefruit growing
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturehorticulturevegetable growing
- social scienceslaw
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Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
75231 PARIS
France