Russia and Ukraine (often referred to as the Black Sea region) have recently emerged as major world grain exporters. Just in the 2011/12 marketing year, according to the USDA (2013) they were among the top ten global suppliers of wheat (27 mln. tons), of corn (17.2 mln. tons), and of barley (5.8 mln. tons). The conquest of the world markets, however, did not come with a similar openness in the approach of the Ukrainian and Russian governments to policy implementation. Until recently it has still been rather dominated by frequent and rather ad hoc policy interventions in the grain markets and especially export markets. The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the efficiency of Back Sea grain markets within the framework of price transmission models. The first essay investigates the magnitude and speed of horizontal price transmission of the Black Sea wheat and Ukrainian barley markets with world grain markets. The second essay investigates short- and long-run price transmission characteristics between world wheat prices and Ukrainian domestic wheat prices at both producer and consumer levels. The third essay uses the dynamic conditional correlation GARCH model to analyze the dynamics of wheat price volatility in the Ukrainian domestic market.

This Open Access book analyses the emergence of Russia as a global food power and what it means for global food trade. Russia's strategy for food production and trade has changed significantly since the end of the Soviet period, and this is the first book to take account of Russia's rise as a food power and the global implications of that rise. It includes food trade policy and practice, and developments in regional food trade. This book will be of interest to academics and practitioners in agricultural economics, international trade, and international food trade.

The main focus of this book is on the causation of starvation in general and of famines in particular. The author develops the alternative method of analysis—the 'entitlement approach'—concentrating on ownership and exchange, not on food supply. The book also provides a general analysis of the characterization and measurement of poverty. Various approaches used in economics, sociology, and political theory are critically examined. The predominance of distributional issues, including distribution between different occupation groups, links up the problem of conceptualizing poverty with that of analyzing starvation.

The Crimean War was a defining event in both European and Ottoman history, but it has principally been studied from the Europeans’ point of view. This study analyzes the role of the Ottoman Empire in the Crimean War and the War’s impact on the Ottoman state and Ottoman society. Based on hitherto unused Ottoman and Russian sources, it offers new insights into the Crimean War’s financial, social and political implications for the Empire, emphasizing the importance of the Ottomans as both actors and victims. In addition to analyzing Ottoman and European public opinion and the diplomatic, economic and political origins of the War, The Ottoman Crimean War (1853-1856) also contains a critical review of the voluminous existing literature on the subject.