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...

This paper uses a political economy model which integrates risk to analyse whether the nature of public food standards [food safety standards, food quality standards, and social and environmental standards] affects the politically optimal level of the standard and the likelihood of trade...

The transition from a centrally planned to a more market-oriented economy provides a natural experiment on the role of institutions and exchange in economic development, and more specifically on firm growth. This paper uses survey data from Bulgaria to analyse the impact of exchange problems and...

Biofuel greenhouse gas (GHG)-reduction standards calculated via life-cycle assessment are shown to be biased, even when indirect land-use change is included, because they are based on physical GHG emissions and uptakes and on simple aggregates of balances. We offer a GHG-reduction standard for...

Static political economy studies show that under-investment in public research may result because of income distributional effects--which induce opposition from groups adversely affected--and that compensation policies can mitigate opposition to public research. This paper explores the...

This paper derives the efficient set of policies for a multifunctional agriculture and relates them to trade. In general, efficiency cannot be achieved through simple output subsidies, but the efficient policies to move closer to socially optimal levels of multifunctional, non-commodity outputs...