Large-scale modeling systems have long been viewed as potentially valuable tools for evaluating farm policy. They have received increased attention in recent years, in part because of the added complexity of U.S. farm programs and the fuller integration of the U.S. farm sector with nonfarm...

In July 1989, U.S. negotiators presented a tariffication proposal at the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) meeting in Geneva. According to that proposal, all agricultural nontariff barriers (NTBs) such as quotas and variable import levies would be converted to equivalent ad valorem...

The United States has an extensive assistance program for less developed countries (LDCs), although its contribution is the lowest among the developed market economies in percent of allocated GNP (OECD 1988). On average for 1985/86, about 11.2 percent or $1.05 billion (1985 prices and exchange...

To identify the winners and the losers from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in agriculture, it is necessary to know which countries will be required to reduce which subsidies by what amounts. Rules that seem fair may actually impose very different future obligations on the...

A Production Entitlement Guarantee (PEG) program would replace existing agricultural policies with a program that would allow governments to subsidize only a fixed proportion of each farmer's historical production. World supply and demand conditions would determine the price farmers receive for...

In a static setting, willingness to pay for an environmental improvement is equal to compensating variation. However, in a dynamic setting characterized by uncertainty, irreversibility, and the potential for learning, willingness to pay may also contain an option value. In this paper, we...

Three alternatives for 1990 farm legislation are examined: (1) a continuation of current legislation; (2) small reductions in producer support levels that are phased in after a two-year delay; and (3) more significant policy reforms that include immediate support reductions for grains and...

This study advances, and experimentally tests, a new explanation for the disparity between willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA)—a dynamic neoclassical theory based on the presence of commitment costs. While to date neoclassical models have not explained the observed...

A dynamic multicountry, multicommodity model is used to evaluate the impact of a moderate General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) agreement. The terms of this agreement are as follows. 1) Export subsidy quantities (using annual and price wedges) are reduced by 50 percent from the 1986-88...

The authors present a dynamic model of an agent's decision to purchase or sell a good under the following conditions: uncertainty, irreversibility, and learning over time. As the authors show, an agent's willingness-to-pay (WTP) is influenced by both the intrinsic value of the good and the...