Institutional quality of meat markets in post-Soviet countries

The research project is aiming at a more comprehensive understanding of the nature and origins of the variations in the development in meat production sector among post-Soviet countries and identify the institutional factors that explain each country’s success. The key objective is to examine the reasons for how and why in certain countries, the meat production industry grows successfully under dynamically changing market and institutional conditions by evaluating formal and informal institutional arrangements. Another objective is to define and explain the institutional constraints faced by livestock growers and meat processors when trying to access the formal markets by assessing contracting environment and contract arrangements in Kazakhstan. The research will focus on analyzing determinants and the dynamics of institutional quality and contracting environment in the meat markets as well as exploring the association between farmers’ contracting decision and a number of transaction cost variables, farmers’ socioeconomic characteristics, and institutional design.