Do U.S. citizens support government intervention in agriculture? Implications for the political economy of agricultural protection

The persistence of agricultural protectionism throughout the world is intriguing given the widely recognized benefits of free trade. The political economy literature over the last decades has considered groups’ interest, politicians’ preferences, and their interactions within domestic politics as the primary forces driving agricultural protection. Yet, a growing body of studies suggests that it would be judicious to weigh in consumers’ or taxpayers’ perspectives in deciphering the nature of agricultural protection. This study examines U.S. citizens’ preferences about government intervention in agriculture and trade. Results show that they are in strong support of agricultural protection and their perceptions of national food security, family farms, environmental sustainability, and multifunctionality of agriculture play a significant role in shaping their support/opposition toward government intervention. The conventional political economy literature theorizes that consumers or taxpayers would oppose public policies that increase their tax burden; however, in the case of the farm sector, they have little incentive to voice their objections given the costs of farm programs are spread across a large number of consumers and taxpayers. U.S. citizens’ support for government involvement in agriculture as reported in this and other prior studies does not lend support for such political economy explanation.     

The transformation of the Indian agricultural input industry: has it increased agricultural R&D?

Indian agricultural input industries have gone through a major transformation in the last 40 years. State owned firms grew during the Green Revolution and then stagnated or declined. Indian corporations that were protected from foreign competition are now exporters of agricultural tractors and pesticides. Foreign multinational corporations are rapidly increasing their role in the seed, pesticide, and tractor industries. Entry by large Indian firms and multinationals has increased competition in the input industries. Private agribusiness R&D in India grew from $23 million in 1985 to $250 million in 2009 in 2005 US dollars. This is the same time period as a transformation in the agricultural input industry, rapid growth in demand for agricultural inputs, breakthroughs in information technology and biotechnology, and changes in intellectual property rights. An econometric model was used to test whether the transformation of agricultural input industry was a major factor in the growth of R&D expenditure or not. This article analyzes a unique, firm level sales and R&D data set from the seed, pesticide, tractor, and fertilizer industries in 2000–2009. The estimated model indicates that agribusiness firms' R&D expenditures from 2000 to 2009 were positively related to variables associated with industry transformation such as firm size, ownership by multinationals, and declining industry concentration. The model also indicates that strengthening patent policy as well as growth in the size of research‐intensive industries like the seed industry contributed to the growth of agribusiness R&D in India.     

EU agri-environmental programs and the "restaurant table effect"

The share of agricultural area enrolled in EU agri-environmental programs varies significantly between EU member states. These national differences are explained, based on a model that reflects both, that these programs internalize externalities and the political economy. We identify six factors that affect the extent to which agri-environmental programs are implemented: environmental benefits, opportunity costs of participation, budgetary pressure, the share of program expenditures financed by the EU, the political weight attributed to farmers at the national, and the political influence of each country at the EU level. In addition, we demonstrate that, if the policy decision-making process is noncooperative at the EU level, countries that contribute less to the EU budget will ceteris paribus implement more programs. Using data of four years and feasible generalized least square methods, we are able to confirm our theoretical results including a noncooperative behavior of EU member states.     

经济增长与收入再分配对湖北省农村贫困变动的影响

本文通过对湖北省否受益并相关结论贫困变动由人均收入水平和收入分配不平等程度两个因素共同决定。贫困变动的增长再分配分解，考察1997—2003年间如上两个因素村贫困变动的影响方向和程度，进而分析在经济增长过程中穷人是算和比较基尼系数，考察在此期间农村居民的收入分配状况，得出对农测。     

Fueling agricultural growth in India: Some reflections

Indian agriculture is experiencing under-performance despite increased attention given to it in the recent past. This paper analyzes the disparities in agricultural growth across Indian states and explores the determinants of agricultural growth, using Panel Corrected Standard Error approach. Analysis using beta convergence shows that the disparities across the state's agricultural growth are narrowing down for the period 1980–1981 to 2011–2012. However, to stimulate growth in the states where agriculture is lagging behind, a higher emphasis on increasing the area under irrigation, expenditure on agricultural research, area under fruits and vegetables, number of regulated markets, length of roads, cold storage facilities and institutional credit for investment purposes is needed. Private sector should be involved in public–private-partnership mode for improving the infrastructure in this sector.     

Did the Federal Crop Insurance Reform Act Alter Farm Enterprise Diversification?

We estimate how much United States farms changed enterprise diversification in response to a marked increase in crop insurance coverage brought about by the 1994 Federal Crop Insurance Reform Act, which substantially increased insurance subsidies. The analysis exploits farm‐level panel census data to compare farm‐specific changes in enterprise diversification over time. By examining diversification decisions of the same farms over time, we control for time‐invariant unobserved individual heterogeneity. We then use pooled cross‐sectional data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Resource Management Survey to estimate the relationship between farm diversification and average returns. We find that the insurance subsidies caused a modest increase in enterprise specialisation and production efficiency. Estimated efficiency gains are far less than the subsidies.