This book pulls back the wrappings that cloak U.S. agriculture and explains how and why politics has affected the traditional stewardship role played by agriculture.

Eleven contributions from Magnusson and Ottosson (both economic history, Uppsala U.) and other academics in the U.S. and Sweden consider the interactions between the state and the market from an institutional and historical perspective. They argue that state interventionism is strongly influenced by historical and path dependent factors. Topics include, for example, regulation in the first century of U.S. railroading and the regulatory reform of Swedish telecommunications. The papers were originally presented at a workshop held in Stockholm in June of 1999. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR