Bio-economic farm modelling for integrated assessment of agricultural and environmental policies: towards re-usability and improved empirical validity

The main objective of this PhD thesis was to develop and evaluate a generic bio-economic farm model that can be used under different biophysical and socio-economic conditions for integrated assessment of a variety of agricultural and environmental policies. The functionality of the generic bio-economic farm model developed in this thesis was illustrated with an analysis of the impacts of the 2003 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy in the European Union for arable and livestock farms in a context of market liberalisation.

In bio-economic studies, estimation of model parameters related to increasing costs because of limited machinery and managerial capacity, decreasing yields because of land heterogeneity and risk aversion is often not possible because of lack of data...