Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan (RUK) are major players in the international grain markets and their exports help to improve global grain availability and hence food security. However, during the last decade the availability of RUK grain exports was repeatedly diminished by harvest failures and further reduced by the introduction of export restrictions. By simulating a reoccurrence of the 2010 RUK harvest situation this paper assesses the impact of grain harvest failures and subsequent temporary export restrictions (bans, quotas, taxes) on national and international food security, specifically quantifying the effects on agricultural market prices and quantities. For the analysis AGLINK-COSIMO, a recursive-dynamic, partial equilibrium, supply–demand model, has been employed. Simulation results highlight the importance of RUK’s grain production for world markets and global food security, indicating substantial price increases due to limited grain exports from RUK. Moreover, scenario results illustrate that temporary RUK export restrictions can considerably aggravate the situation on world grain markets, with particularly adverse effects for grain net importing countries. At the same time, results show that for a country like Ukraine, i.e. a country usually exporting large shares of its total grain production, the introduction of export restrictions could potentially result in decreases of domestic consumer prices to a level even below a situation with normal weather conditions. The results put international trade policy into focus and underline the necessity of greater cooperation on the part of exporting countries in order to avoid importing countries being denied necessary grain supplies.

The upland olive groves of Andalusia (Southern Spain) are an example of fragile landscape from an ecological point of view. The wildfire and soil erosion risks that can result in the desertification of the area are the main components of fragility. This paper focuses on the visual quality assessment of this agricultural system as a mean to their economic and environmental sustainability. The case study is represented by the upland olive groves of the municipality of Montoro where rural tourism is an important economic activity. We carried out a personal interview survey on 480 citizens to determine their visual preferences regarding three representative types of olive plantation landscape to be transferred to landscape level through a Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) multicriteria decision-making technique was the method used to derive preferences from the survey. The results suggest that olive farming systems with grass vegetation cover between the trees are the preferred landscape type (0.42), followed very closely by the non-productive olive groves (0.41). The conventional olive farming system was the least preferred landscape (0.17). The visual quality map presents five categories, revealing that most of the olive groves in the study area belong to the very low visual quality category (93% of the total area).

In the present study, a GTAP CGE model is used to assess three proposed scenarios for the DCFTA between the EU and Ukraine, one for unilateral trade liberalisation, another for bilateral trade liberalisation with exemptions from free trade and a third for bilateral trade liberalisation without exemptions from free trade. The main point of distinction of this study is the inclusion of exemptions from free trade in the first two simulated scenarios and the possibility of a quantitative evaluation of exemptions from free trade through the differences between scenarios 3 and 2.

La Revista de Fomento Social es una publicación revisada por pares, creada en 1946 por los jesuitas y publicada por la Universidad Loyola Andalucía que aborda temas relacionados con las ciencias sociales, en concreto con la economía, la empresa, la sociología, la política y el derecho, con una especial atención a la dimensión ética implícita en todos ellos y desde una óptica cristiana.

La Cooperación Universitaria al Desarrollo constituye una parte importante de la “tercera misión” de las universidades. Este estudio investiga, desde un enfoque de capacidades, la percepción que tienen las universidades latinoamericanas, como receptoras de ayuda, sobre los efectos a largo plazo de los programas de cooperación para el desarrollo que mantienen con universidades del Norte. Utilizando una combinación de metodologías cualitativa (método de Colaizzi) y cuantitativa (Analytic Hierarchy Process), se ha obtenido una valoración de los distintos tipos de actividades propios de la cooperación universitaria, y se han categorizado y priorizado los impactos de las intervenciones. Esta evaluación de impacto puede orientar futuros programas de ayuda universitaria más eficaces, desde el punto de vista de los receptores de la ayuda.