To address the question, "Should we expect government policy to be efficient?" at its roots, I modify the well-known Arrow-Debreu private ownership economy, allowing property rights to be violable. The result is that equilibria tend to be Pareto inefficient.

Our purpose is to present in detail numerical methods of measuring the value of nonmarket goods using market data, under either weak neutrality, weak complementarity, or any other preference restriction meeting the requirements discussed in this paper. It has been claimed in a number of places...

The purpose of this paper is to develop the methodology that allows the inclusion of a technology variable in multi-market welfare models. We compare the price induced welfare effects obtained from a multimarket technology-inclusive model, a multimarket technology-exclusive model and a...

We combine theory with numerical integration methods to show that for any form of uncompensated supply, compensating variation of a change in higher moments of an output price distribution can be numerically derived.

This paper gives a general mathematical definition of an institution, and presents an explicit formal method by which to incorporate institutions in a standard general equilibrium model. We illustrate our concept using a modified Prisoner's dilemma game in which property rights over natural...

We survey grain and soybean handlers and producers in the U.S. and EU to estimate costs of preserving the identities of GMO and non-GMO crops in marketing channels. We introduce our estimates into the IFPRI IMPACT model to simulate the effects of identity preservation on farm incomes and...

Recent studies have investigated the efficiencies of policies that use several policy instruments simultaneously (for example, a policy that uses a production subsidy combined with a production quota). Several studies of very specific cases find that optimal combination of two policy instruments...

A brief review of the history of agricultural policymaking in Europe and the U.S. reveals that major policy changes have often been brought about by major socio-political "shocks," such as the Great Depression and World War II. Such shocks also lead to the creation of institutions that tend to...

Positive political economy is usually concerned with economic explanations of observed policy choices, while the timing of a policy reform has not gained similar attention. This is somewhat surprising since policy makers most often are free to decide both the design and timing of a policy...