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Provides historical and contemporary information on U.S. Government agricultural subsidies and how they affect agricultural policy in the Western U.S.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the links that exist between the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Communities (EC) and the EC budget. In particular, the thesis examines the impact on the budget of reforming the CAP. It shows that the nature of support offered under the CAP up to the 1992 MacSharry reforms has a strong historical precedent in French and German history. It then goes on to examine in greater detail the support mechanisms of the cereals and oilseeds sectors. The cereals sector is focused on because of its importance in agricultural output and in total agricultural support expenditure by the EC. Oilseeds is considered for its policy linkages with cereals in both production and consumption. The detailed nature of expenditures on these sectors is examined in detail, with particular emphasis placed on costs and policy problems arising out of intervention storage. In forecasting future expenditures under different policy scenarios, cereals production and consumption are considered separately. Imports, exports and intervention behaviour are also considered, to permit the examination of all aspects of the cereals market that affect expenditure. The impact of the 1992 MacSharry reforms is compared to a strict continuation of the 1988 stabiliser reforms and a price freeze at 1992 levels for the forecast period to 1999. It is shown that the impact of the 1992 reforms is to reduce the extent of the market imbalances by 1999 as compared with the base scenarios, but unless the level of compensatory payment is cut, then by 1999, the EC faces a support bill that is higher under the new policy than would have been the case had the 1988 reforms been retained.

This thesis draws on the insights of economics, political economy and political science to study the MacSharry reforms of the CAP enacted in May 1992. It has two objectives. First, to understand the MacSharry reforms in terms of why they happened, when they did and in the form that they did. Second, to develop a more general framework for the interpretation of CAP reforms. The thesis is in two parts. In the first, the public choice paradigm of decision-making systems is introduced as an alternative to neo-classical agricultural economics. It is employed to generate three frameworks of CAP reforms; the interest groups, the prominent players and the institutions. The evidence from the histories of previous reforms of the CAP provides the bias that the institutions framework is the most insightful for understanding the reform process. The second part of the thesis is a case study of the MacSharry reforms. It is constructed from primary and secondary sources. Seventeen in-depth, individual interviews with key participants in, or observers of, the reform process were conducted. These are complimented by an extensive survey of the general news commentary on, the academic analysis of, and specialist agri-business views of the reforms. The institutions framework drawn from part one of the thesis is used to interpret this evidence to achieve objective one of the thesis. The central claim with regard to the second objective is that previous attempts at understanding the CAP reform process and its outcome have tended to underestimate the importance of the institutional structure of decision-making.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the links that exist between the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Communities (EC) and the EC budget. In particular, the thesis examines the impact on the budget of reforming the CAP. It shows that the nature of support offered under the CAP up to the 1992 MacSharry reforms has a strong historical precedent in French and German history. It then goes on to examine in greater detail the support mechanisms of the cereals and oilseeds sectors. The cereals sector is focused on because of its importance in agricultural output and in total agricultural support expenditure by the EC. Oilseeds is considered for its policy linkages with cereals in both production and consumption. The detailed nature of expenditures on these sectors is examined in detail, with particular emphasis placed on costs and policy problems arising out of intervention storage. In forecasting future expenditures under different policy scenarios, cereals production and consumption are considered separately. Imports, exports and intervention behaviour are also considered, to permit the examination of all aspects of the cereals market that affect expenditure. The impact of the 1992 MacSharry reforms is compared to a strict continuation of the 1988 stabiliser reforms and a price freeze at 1992 levels for the forecast period to 1999. It is shown that the impact of the 1992 reforms is to reduce the extent of the market imbalances by 1999 as compared with the base scenarios, but unless the level of compensatory payment is cut, then by 1999, the EC faces a support bill that is higher under the new policy than would have been the case had the 1988 reforms been retained.

This thesis draws on the insights of economics, political economy and political science to study the MacSharry reforms of the CAP enacted in May 1992. It has two objectives. First, to understand the MacSharry reforms in terms of why they happened, when they did and in the form that they did. Second, to develop a more general framework for the interpretation of CAP reforms. The thesis is in two parts. In the first, the public choice paradigm of decision-making systems is introduced as an alternative to neo-classical agricultural economics. It is employed to generate three frameworks of CAP reforms; the interest groups, the prominent players and the institutions. The evidence from the histories of previous reforms of the CAP provides the bias that the institutions framework is the most insightful for understanding the reform process. The second part of the thesis is a case study of the MacSharry reforms. It is constructed from primary and secondary sources. Seventeen in-depth, individual interviews with key participants in, or observers of, the reform process were conducted. These are complimented by an extensive survey of the general news commentary on, the academic analysis of, and specialist agri-business views of the reforms. The institutions framework drawn from part one of the thesis is used to interpret this evidence to achieve objective one of the thesis. The central claim with regard to the second objective is that previous attempts at understanding the CAP reform process and its outcome have tended to underestimate the importance of the institutional structure of decision-making.