MARKET ALLOCATION RULES FOR NONPRICE PROMOTION WITH FARM PROGRAMS: U.S. COTTON

Rules are derived to indicate the optimal allocation of a fixed promotion budget between domestic and export markets when the commodity in question represents a significant portion of world trade and is protected in the domestic market by a deficiency-payment program. Optimal allocation decisions are governed by advertising elasticities in the domestic and export markets and the export market share. Promotion’'s ability to lower deficiency payments is inversely related to the absolute value of demand elasticities in the domestic and export markets and directly related to advertising elasticities and certain policy parameters. The empirical application suggests subsidies for nonprice export promotion may be efficiency increasing in a second-best sense. That is, the heightened subsidies associated with the Targeted Export Assistance program and the Market Promotion Program appear to have corrected allocative errors that favored domestic market promotion.