This thesis consists of a summary and four papers. The first two papers address political economy and industrial organization aspects of agricultural policy, and the last two international aspects of environmental policy.
Paper [I] describes Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies to farmers by the influence of farmer interest-groups with an EU-wide membership. The evaluation is dependant on panel-data for 15 commodities covering the period 1986-2003. Since the CAP is set as an overall EU policy, effective lobbying offers a collective action problem to the farmers in the EU in general. Indications of lobbying, that are dependant on this belief, are found to explain part of the variation in agricultural support.
In Paper [II], the Bresnahan-Lau framework is utilized to investigate whether policy reforms, i.e. the two-price sys-tem (an input quota, 1986-1991) and a general deregulation of dairy policy (1991-1994) had any market power effects on the Swedish butter market. The outcomes reveal that the null hypothesis of no market power can’t be declined, for any of the specific policy reforms, at any reasonable significance level.
Paper [III] concerns the welfare consequences of environmental policy cooperation. It is presumed that countries finance their public expenditures by employing distortionary taxes, and that they are different regarding competition in the labor market. It’s shown how the welfare effect of an improvement in the expenditures on abatement depends upon adjustments to the environmental damage, employment and work hours. The welfare effect is also associated with the strategic interaction among the countries in the prereform equilibrium….
Contents: Essays on agricultural and environmental policy
1 Introduction
2 Agricultural Policy
2.1 The Political Economy of Agriculture
2.2 Cooperatives and Competition
2.3 Summary of Papers [I] and [II]
3 Environmental Policy
3.1 Environmental Policy Reforms in the Presence of other Tax Distortions
3.2 Environmental Policy and Federalism
3.3 Summary of Papers [III] and [IV]…
Source: Umea University