Reindeer husbandry is a cornerstone in the culture of the Sami, northern Scandinavia’s indigenous people. This paper presents a dynamic, theoretical model of the Swedish reindeer husbandry and the market for reindeer meat, as well as econometric results based on three-stage least squares regression on annual data. The most striking feature of the empirical results is a “backward-sloping” supply function, which is consistent with the theoretical model. The results also show effects of the Chernobyl accident. Prevailing winds at the time of the accident carried radioactive fallout over the grazing areas for the Swedish reindeer husbandry, causing effects on both supply and demand.
The decoupling of direct payments from production introduced in the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy is expected to make production decisions more market-oriented and farmers more productive. However, ex-post analyses of the productivity of farms have yet to uncover any evidence of a positive impact of the decoupling policy on farm productivity. Using Irish, Danish, and Dutch farm-level data, we identify whether the decoupling policy has contributed to productivity growth in agriculture and farm product adjustment behavior. We find some evidence that the decoupling policy had significant positive effects on farm productivity and behavioral changes related to farm specialization.