Encouraging of competitive relations and strengthening of competitive position of domestic producers on both national and EU common market of products and services become one of the main priorities of national economic policy. Latvian national interests are closely related to the maintenance of the competitive environment as an important factor for increase of competitiveness of separate commodity, enterprise or industry, which is able to provide economic growth in the circumstances of declining the business activity and strong competition on internal and external markets. However, fair market competition takes place only on the markets where there are no any essential obstacles and barriers for potential entry of new market actors. That is why the present article is prepared on the basis of case study carried out for Latvian grain processing sector with the purpose to describe and qualitatively assess the effects of various entry barriers, which really exist on the domestic market.

Turkish traditional food producers are mainly subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers who have a limited marketing knowledge. They thus encounter a significant number of problems during the supply chain due to the lack of capital, awareness and equipment, as well as underutilized resources and insufficient rural infrastructure. They are also not actively encouraged by the policies implemented at the regional level. The majority of the food reaches consumers either directly (the less common purchases from the farmer) or via a number of intermediaries. If the current volume of traditional food is compared with the past production volume, it can be clearly seen that there is a sharp decrease in the production in contrast to the rapidly increasing population. This study aims to find willingness of Turkish consumers to pay for a MarketMaker website – an electronic trading platform of traditional products in Turkey. The estimations rely on data collected from 157 persons covering all regions in Turkey through an online survey in August, 2015. The average willingness to pay (WTP) annually was found to be about 32 Turkish Liras (TRY) for all observations including zero bids and TRY 164 excluding zero bids. The results of the probit model show that age, marital status and shopping in traditional food markets were identified by the model to have a significant impact on the probability of WTP.

In 2018, the Polish Trade Inspection in the whole country carried out an assessment of unrefined vegetable oils and olive oils of various categories. First of all, the correctness of marking, physicochemical parameters, storage conditions, traceability of products and their dates of minimum durability were assessed. In total 380 batches of products were inspected. Results of the examination show that producers cheat consumers by providing, for example, untrue nutritional values or false information about dietetic or health traits. The purpose of this article is to determine what consumers should know to verify the correctness of information on product labels independently. The theoretical part of the article was based on the EU regulations analysis regarding vegetable oils properties, including the characteristics of olive oil. The empirical part concerned data from Polish Trade Inspection reports, as well as statistical data on production and sale of oil and olive oil from the portal Statista. In this article methods of documentary research and comparative analysis were used. For the main conclusion it can be assumed that products of poor quality or incorrect labeling can be found in each product category; therefore, consumers should pay attention to such elements as information in their native language, a full list of ingredients, or correct indication of nutritional values.

The aim of the paper is to analyze relationship between international trade and the correlation of the business cycles between Baltic countries and their main trading partners. Two univariate methods are used to extract cyclical components in the time series: exponential smoothing procedure the Hodrick-Prescott filter and unobserved components method. A simple regression model proves the hypothesis that trade intensity has led to business cycle synchronization. The main conclusion is that there exists a strong correlation between the business cycles of the Baltic countries. However, the economic cycle of Baltic countries is different from that of their main trading partners in EU. According to Optimum Currency Area theory, these results cast doubts on the usefulness of adopting the euro in the Baltic countries in the near future. On the other hand, recently the deepening of economic integration has led to make intense trade between the Baltic countries and the EU, which may eventually imply more synchronised cycles in the future.

Vocational education in all countries provides a specific learning system to their students and students are more motivated to take practical training for their further development. Agriculture-based vocational educational institutions have been facing problems of losing its students since 1998. To promote survival of these schools, a non-agriculture based curriculum was provided. Nowadays, in order to support agriculture-based vocational education, there is a need to do research on the prospects and needs of this type of schooling in Latvia. There is a need for new methods and models of curricula, based on practical needs of students, in order to promote management and marketing skills for future farmers.

The forest certification becomes actual within the forest sector as a trade restriction when customers have started to require products from certified sources. There are several international documents that are regulating the use of international market restrictions. However some misunderstandings and problems with interpretation of free market and forest certification regarding certified product market still exist.