THE ECONOMICS OF FARM ORGANIZATION IN CEEC AND FSU

In Western Europe, USA and other developed countries agriculture is dominated by small family farms. In Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) and Former Soviet Union (FSU) dual structure of farms exists. There are large corporate farms (CF) and small family farms (FF) in CEEC and FSU. Our paper shows that both CF and FF specialize in commodities in which they have comparative advantage. CF specialize in capital intensive products and in products with low labor monitoring. FF specialize in products with higher labor monitoring requirements. The implication of this paper is that farm structure determines in which products the country will be competitive on international markets. This is especially important for transition countries where high transaction costs hinder the change of farm organization. For this reason in transition countries suffering from high transaction cost the choice of product structure is more important than the choice of farm organization.farm structure, production specialization, transaction costs, CEEC, FSU, Farm Management,