How to Design a Targeted Agricultural Subsidy System: Efficiency or Equity?

Summary, in English

In this paper we appraise current agricultural subsidy policy in the EU. Several sources of its inefficiency are identified: it is inefficient for supporting farmers’ incomes or guaranteeing food security, and irrational transfer payments decoupled from actual performance that may be negative for environmental protection, social cohesion, etc. Based on a simplified economic model, we prove that there is ‘‘reverse redistribution’’ in the current tax-subsidy system, which cannot be avoided. To find a possible way to distribute subsidies more efficiently and equitably, several alternative subsidy systems (the pure loan, the harvest tax and the income contingent loan) are presented and examined.

• Författare: Ronggang Cong; Mark Brady
• Avdelning/ar: Centrum för miljö- och klimatvetenskap (CEC); AgriFood Economics Centre, Ekonomihögskolan vid Lunds universitet; BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate
• Publiceringsår: 2012
• Språk: Engelska
• Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie: PLoS ONE
• Volym: 7
• Issue: 8
• Fulltext: - 1 MB; Download statistics
• Länkar: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0041225
• Dokumenttyp: Artikel i tidskrift
• Förlag: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Ämne: Earth and Related Environmental Sciences; Economics
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt: ISSN: 1932-6203