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Abstract
Despite a total budget increase for rural
development in the new programming period (2007-
2013), for most older Member States in the now
expanded European Union the multi-annual spending
plan for the period 2007-2013 predicts a substantial
decrease of the budget for rural development and thus
for agri-environmental schemes (AESs). It can be
assumed that nothing or only part of this loss could be
compensated by national funds in most countries.
Therefore designing more efficient national governance
structures for AESs, which decrease public transaction
costs (TCs), would be an appropriate answer to this
problem. The objective of this paper is to define the
factors influencing these public TCs, because then
appropriate action can be taken to reduce them. A
statistical analysis with a proxy for public TCs is
combined with an analysis of the perception on public
TCs influencing factors of the stakeholders involved (not
including farmers). The research showed that mainly
scheme related factors are perceived to be important,
although the governance structure, institutional
environment and trust also play a role. High public TCs
are however not necessarily a problem, if they would
lead to a higher environmental effectiveness of the
schemes. It is important to pay attention to the
heterogeneity of the natural environment and on the
basis of that decide for a more centralised or
decentralised approach to AES design.