Measuring the social costs of suboptimal combinations of policy instruments: A general framework and an example

D.S. Bullock and Klaus Salhofer

Agricultural Economics, 1998, vol. 18, issue 3, 249-259

Abstract: Since most agricultural programs employ two or more policy instruments simultaneously, it is notable thai little research has attempted to find optimal instrument combinations and no research exists which evaluates the social costs (unrealized benefits) of combining instruments suboptimally. In our paper we report a simple and feasible method to find optimal policy instrument combinations, and we provide the first general, formal approach to measuring the social costs of suboptimal policy instrument combinations. Our approach is illustrated in an analysis for live major U.S. crops (corn, feed grains, wheat, rice, cotton). The simple model we employ for the illustration suggests that except lor the feed grains program, the observed programs combined policy instruments quite suboptimally. We conclude that agricultural economics research now can and should begin placing increased emphasis on studying optimal policy instrument combinations.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1574-0862.1998.tb00503.x

Related works:
Journal Article: Measuring the social costs of suboptimal combinations of policy instruments: A general framework and an example (1998)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:agecon:v:18:y:1998:i:3:p:249-259

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0169-5150

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Economics is currently edited by W.A. Masters and G.E. Shively

More articles in Agricultural Economics from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().