Static political economy studies show that under-investment in public research may result because of income distributional effects--which induce opposition from groups adversely affected--and that compensation policies can mitigate opposition to public research. This paper explores the...

This paper derives the efficient set of policies for a multifunctional agriculture and relates them to trade. In general, efficiency cannot be achieved through simple output subsidies, but the efficient policies to move closer to socially optimal levels of multifunctional, non-commodity outputs...

U.S. import tariffs on ethanol are designed to offset a tax credit that benefits U.S. and foreign producers alike. The tax credit is an ethanol consumption subsidy but ethanol market prices increase by almost the full amount of the credit as the impact on world oil prices is small. Therefore,...

This paper analyzes the effects of trade liberalization of tariff-rate quotas under import "state trading enterprises" (STEs) in agriculture. An analytical framework is provided to determine the importance of which instrument is binding under competition (the in-quota or out-of-quota tariff or...

This paper analyzes rent seeking for agricultural import quotas and the associated waste of resources when politically contestable licenses are allocated to either or both importers and exporters. In a two-stage simultaneous contest where firms seek rent for licenses and then bargain over the...