IAMO researcher wins GEWISOLA Award

Researcher Dr. Marten Graubner received this year’s award of the German Society of Economic and Social Sciences in Agriculture (GEWISOLA) for his excellent PhD thesis 'The Spatial Dimension of Pricing and Competition in Agricultural Markets’. The award ceremony was held on 26 September 2012 during the opening of the GEWISOLA Annual Conference in Hohenheim, Germany. Dr.Meike Janssen of Universität Kassel was also honoured for her thesis 'Labelling Schemes for Organic Food: Consumer Attitudes, Preferences and Willingness-to-Pay in Six European Countries’. Professor Ernst Berg, GEWISOLA chairman, presented the award for special achievements of young talents upon the two winners.

In his PhD thesis Graubner analysed pricing and competition in spatially differentiated markets. He developed, inter alia, the computer based simulation model SpAbCoM (Spatial Agent-based Competition Model) to explicitly capture the spatial distribution of production and processing of agricultural produce and the resulting transport costs. The researcher’s findings allow a better understanding of pricing and competition behaviour, e.g. of dairies in the raw milk market, and are also relevant for general economic issues, such as spatial price discrimination or product differentiation.

Earlier this year, his impressive research outcomes in this field earned Graubner already one of three Junior Researcher Awards of the German Association for Informatics in Agriculture, Forestry, and the Food Sector (GIL), awarded at the 32nd GIL Conference in Weihenstephan. Graubner presently works in the Department of Structural Development of Farms and Rural Areas at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe (IAMO) where he researches specifically on subjects in spatial price and competition theory by means of agent-based modelling.

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