The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyze the role of agriculture in the process of transition to a market economy, with a primary focus on its contribution to regional income distribution in the Republic of Macedonia. During the transition, the Macedonian economy has deteriorated; both output and employment have significantly declined while income inequality has become worse. In these contexts, what are the effects of economic transition on agriculture? Has the agricultural sector buffered transition shocks, contributing to societal stability during the transition? What about the role of agriculture in income distribution across regions? This paper addresses these questions, with special attention to the dual structure of Macedonian agriculture: small individual and large corporate farms.
It is found that the agricultural sector has kept its level of output throughout the transition period. Further, a trend analysis by organizational form shows that a distinct difference existed in response to transition shocks between the two farm sub-sectors. The in-dividual farm sub-sector has been stable and even increased both output and employment during the transition. In contrast, the corporate farm sub-sector experienced substantial falls in output and employment.
Decomposition analysis of Gini coefficients reveals that agriculture has played an important role in alleviating income inequality across regions during the period 1986-1995 and the role is more striking for individual farms. The differential between the two farm sub-sectors reflects the fact that there exists a marked difference in behavioral response to transition shocks.
These results lead to the conclusion that while large-scale corporate agriculture was vulnerable to changes in market conditions and public policies, individual agriculture has contributed to societal stability by offering a buffer against the risk of poverty that has been increasing, particularly in lower-income regions under the continued stagnation of the overall economy during the transition.

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The Kainou-gikai, which was founded in 1875, was the first agricultural society in modern Japan. The periodical bulletin which was published by this society was the Kainou-zappou. This bulletin was the first periodical agricultural bulletin in modern Japan. Therefore, the Kainou-gikai and the Kainou-zappou were very important in the modern history of Japanese agriculture. However, there has been little research about the Kainou-gikai and the Kainou-zappou so far. This study is the first detailed research about the Kainou-gikai and the Kainou-zappou. The aim of this study is to clarify the role the Kainou-gikai and the Kainou-zappou played in the modern history of Japanese agriculture.
Most of the members of the Kainou-gikai were bureaucrats of the Department of the Interior or the Ministry of Finance. However, this was not all they had in common. From the last years of the Edo Period to the early stages of the Meiji Era, most of the members in the Kainou-gikai studied western learning or Japanese classical literature. In the early stages of the Meiji Era, they were the educated elite concerned with agriculture. Because there were few people who knew about modern agriculture at that time, their roles in popularizing knowledge about modern agriculture and improving agricultural technology were very important.
The Kainou-zappou became the model for the periodical agricultural bulletins which were published after that. Moreover, the meeting which they held in Tokyo in 1876 (Kainou-rinjikai) became the model for the nationwide meeting on agriculture (Noudankai) in 1881.

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An auction is generally operated for one product as an undividable product. There is, however, another auction that deals with dividable goods such as agricultural products. At this type of auction the goods can be shared among various bidders, and the auction is generally referred as a "share auction ". This study focuses on the latter, which has not yet been examined.
In Japan, flowers have been conventionally auctioned by hand-signal. The hand-signal auction is very similar to that of the English auction, but has additionally a special rule called "Mari". "Mari" is a traditional and very useful method in Japan for sharing dividable goods among bidders. The hand-signal auction is one of the share auctions.
In 1991, a Japanese flower-wholesale company established an electronic auction system that duplicated the Dutch flower auction, which has extended to 22 of the 174 companies very rapidly. This new system did not duplicate the Dutch system completely, but it unified the Dutch electric auction and the Japanese "Mari" rule.
This study is an analysis of the new auction system to clarify its economic implication and viability in share auctions. The findings show that the new system does not fall under the Pareto optimum and has a strong trend of depressing average prices. This auction eventually leads to unexpected wrong effects, implying that price decision in the auction cannot win growers' confidence.

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This paper describes the efficiency of physical distribution systems for vegetables, in which vegetable production areas are connected with central wholesale markets. The distribution systems are compared with the hypothetical minimum-cost distribution system, which is defined as an optimum solution of a linear programming problem. Data on the representative vegetables such as radishes, cabbages, spinach, cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions are used for the analysis.
The results are summarized as follows: (1) Total transportation costs between production areas and the wholesale markets are increasing because of the increase in transactions, the transfer of production areas from suburban areas to remote areas, and the widening of trading areas. (2) The efficiency of the distribution is decreasing as a result of wholesaler' surplus collecting activities compared with the shifts of producing areas.
These results indicate that the cost-efficiency in vegetable distribution systems is decreasing.

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