Organizational Economics in the Food, Agribusiness, and Agricultural Sectors

The past three decades have seen significant advances in the field of organizational economics. By endogenizing "institutions" into their analysis, organization economists have enriched and extended the study of economic behavior. This paper explores the dynamic process of adoption of organizational economics or new institutional economics as applied to food economics, agribusiness management, and agricultural economics. The authors view the rapid agroindustrialization of the global food system as fertile ground for adoption of transaction cost, property-rights/incomplete contracting, and agency approaches to understanding the significant changes currently affecting the sector. Numerous research centers and data collection efforts have emerged to expand the organizational economics analytical approach. This paper also serves as an introductory umbrella for the three subsequent papers which document the progress of conceptualization and empirical work in organizational economics applied to food, agribusiness, and agriculture.