Distributional issues in check-off funded programs

Julian Alston, John Freebairn and Jennifer S. James
Additional contact information
Jennifer S. James: Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802-5601. E-mail: JJames@psu.edu, Postal: Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802-5601. E-mail: JJames@psu.edu

Agribusiness, 2003, vol. 19, issue 3, 277-287

Abstract: Agricultural commodity taxes, called check-offs, are used to finance promotion, research, and other activities that can be regarded as industry collective goods. The collection of the check-offs and the programs they are used to fund have implications for the welfare of consumers, other producers, and taxpayers in addition to their effects on those producers who are allowed to vote in the procedures for authorizing the programs. As well as simple fairness or equity considerations, such shifting of the incidence of benefits and costs to others can lead to a divergence between producer and national optimal choices, and hence efficiency losses. From a public policy perspective, then, the implications for others ought to be considered in the design of the enabling legislation, in the evaluation of the specific programs, and in the rules governing the behavior of the agricultural producer groups engaged in commodity check-off programs. [EconLit citations: Q180, Q130, H420]. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Agribusiness 19: 277-287, 2003.

Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/agr.10058 Link to full text; subscription required (text/html)

Related works:
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:wly:agribz:v:19:y:2003:i:3:p:277-287

DOI: 10.1002/agr.10058

Access Statistics for this article

Agribusiness is currently edited by Ronald W. Cotterill

More articles in Agribusiness from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().