Economic Systems 28 (2004) 13–33 Risk and agricultural de-collectivisation, with evidence from the Czech Republic Dirk J. Bezemer ∗ Imperial College, University of London, London, UK Received 15 February 2002; received in revised form 6 October 2003; accepted 21 November 2003 Abstract The importance of family farms in Central and Eastern European agriculture during the tran- sition has been more limited than was initially expected. In this paper a framework is developed in order to analyse the behaviour of family farms and corporate farms in the presence of risk, given the typical post-socialist environment. Management incentives, ownership structure, finan- cial transfers and consumption-production linkages are shown to have the potential to limit the size of family farms relative to corporate farms. The hypotheses are tested with survey data from the Czech Republic. It appears plausible that risk limits the extent of structural change in transitional agriculture. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: D21; D81; O18; Q12 Keywords: Transition; Agriculture; Structural change; Risk; Survey data 1. Introduction A salient feature of the economic transformation process in Central and Eastern European countries is the relative persistence of production structures in the agricultural sectors. Farms in the socialist, centrally planned economies in the region were either collective or state farms. 1 Both farm types were characterised by a separation between farm ownership, control over the production process and implementation of production tasks. Such farms and their successor organisations will therefore be referred to as corporate farms. These ∗ Tel.: +44-20-75942913; fax: +44-20-75942838. E-mail address: d.bezemer@ic.ac.uk (D.J. Bezemer). 1 Except Poland and former Yugoslavia, where family farms were dominant throughout the communist era (Pryor, 1992; Waedekin, 1982). 0939-3625/$ – see front matter © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ecosys.2003.11.003