The Political Economy of Commodity and Public Good Policies in European Agriculture: Implications for Policy Reform.

Public policies are often classified as falling into two conceptually distinct categories: productive policies which are designed to provide public goods (PERTs) and predatory policies which are primarily intended to affect redistribution (PESTs). Governments engage in both types of policies simultaneously when there exists interactions between the consequences of the two types of policies. They must be chosen jointly. Failure to recognize the interactions between the effects of the two policies and failure to recognize the consequent jointness in the policy selection process can lead to misinterpretation of the effectiveness of each policy. Within this context, we explore the interrelatedness of public good policies and redistributive policies in European agriculture. We discuss the implications for reform of both types of policies. Copyright 1991 by Oxford University Press.