Political Reforms and Public Policies: Evidence from Agricultural Protection.

This paper studies the effect of political regime transitions on public policy using a dataset on global agricultural distortions over 50 years (including data from 74 developing and developed countries over the period 1955-2005). We employ both difference-in-differences regressions and semi-parametric matching methods, exploiting the time series and cross-sectional variation in the data. Our semi-parametric estimates show that parametric methods might underestimate the effect of democracy on public policy. In addition, we find that the effect is asymmetric: agricultural protection increases after a country’s transition to democracy of about 9% points, but there is no effect when the political regime shifts from democracy to autocracy. Overall, the evidence supports the redistributive nature of democratic institutions toward the majority and, therefore, it is consistent with the median voter model of political behaviour.

Climate change and migration: Is agriculture the main channel?

Migration and climate change are two of the most important challenges the world currently faces. They are connected as climate change may stimulate or hinder migration. One of the sectors strongly affected by climate change is agriculture, which is the source of income for most of the world's poor. Climate change may affect agricultural productivity and hence migration because of its impact on average temperatures and rainfall and because it increases the frequency and intensity of weather shocks. In this paper we use data on 108 countries from 1960 to 2010 to analyze the relationship between weather variations, changes in agricultural productivity and international migration. We find that negative shocks to agricultural productivity caused by climate fluctuations significantly increase emigration from developing countries, an especially strong impact in poor countries but less so in middle income countries. These results are robust to the definitions of the poor country sample, and to several checks and alternative explanations suggested by the literature. Importantly, our results point to a causal interpretation of the agricultural channel to explain the climate change-migration nexus

The political economy of trade-related regulatory policy : environment and global value chain

This paper proposes a selective review of the political and economics literature on non-tariff measures (NTMs), with special emphasis on the so-called behindthe-border measures, such as environmental and food standards. We focus on both theory and existing empirical evidence. The complex issue of international trading rules over domestic regulatory standards, as well as the emerging role of outsourcing and global value chains, is also considered

Land inequality, government ideology and agricultural protection

This paper presents an empirical investigation of how agricultural land ownership inequality and government ideology (right-wing vs. left-wing) affect agricultural protection. Theoretically the links are quite ambiguous, switching from positive to negative depending on the structure of the underlying political economic model - i.e. pressure groups vs. median voter approach. The data show, overall, that protection is decreasing in land inequality and with left-wing government orientation, but not in a linear fashion: left-wing governments tend to support agriculture in more unequal societies. There is some evidence that the relationship holds better in democracies than in dictatorships

Trade effects of geographical indication policy: The EU case

Using a new detailed dataset on country-product information on European Union (EU) Geographical Indications (GIs), we study the impact of this food quality policy on trade margins over the 1996–2014 period. We consider the effect of GIs on both intra- and extra-EU trade margins (extensive and intensive), as well as on export (and import) unit values. Our main results show that GIs affect trade flows differently depending on whether GIs are produced by the exporter or importer country. The presence of GIs in the exporter country systematically exerts a positive trade effect on both the extensive and intensive trade margin. When registered only in the importer country, GIs seem to act weakly as a trade-reducing measure, at least at the intensive trade margin. In addition, GIs positively affect export prices, consistent with the idea that GI products are perceived by consumers as higher quality goods. Importantly, extra-EU trade margins react similarly to those on intra-EU trade. These results have clear and interesting implications concerning the EU strategy of promoting the protection of GIs worldwide

Mass media and public policy for agriculture

Mass media plays a crucial role in information distribution and thus in the political market and public policy making. Theory predicts that information provided by mass media reflects the media's incentives to provide news to different types of groups in society, and affects these groups?influence in policy-making. We use data on agricultural policy from 60 countries, spanning a wide range of development stages and media markets, to test these predictions. We find that, in line with theoretical predictions, public support to agriculture is strongly affected by the structure of the mass media. In particular, a greater role of the private mass media in society is associated with policies which benefit the majority more: it reduces taxation of agriculture in poor countries and reduces subsidization of agriculture in rich countries, ceteris paribus. The evidence is also consistent with the hypothesis that increased competition in commercial media reduces transfers to special interest groups and contributes to more efficient public policie

The impact of different energy policy options on feedstock price and land demand for maize silage: the case of biogas in Lombardy

The growing demand of maize silage for biogas production in Northern Italy has triggered an intense debate concerning land rents, maize prices and their possible negative consequences on important agri-food chains. The aim of this work is to quantify the extent to which the rapid spread of biogas raised the maize price at regional level, increasing the demand of land for energy crops. For this purpose we applied a partial-equilibrium framework simulating the agricultural sector and the biogas industry in Lombardy, under two alternative schemes of subsidization policy. Results show that policy measures implemented in 2013 \u2013 reducing the average subsidy per kWh \u2013 may contribute to enforce the complementarity of the sector with agri-food chains, decreasing the competition between energy and non-energy uses. Compared to the old scheme, maize demand for biogas would decrease , lessening the market clearing price (as well as feed opportunity cost for livestock sector) and reducing land demand for energy purposes

Mass media and public policy : global evidence from agricultural policy

Mass media play a crucial role in information distribution and in the political market and public policy making. Theory predicts that information provided by the mass media reflects the media\u2019s incentives to provide news to different groups in society and affects these groups\u2019 influence in policy making. We use data on agricultural policy from 69 countries spanning a wide range of development stages and media markets to test these predictions. Our empirical results are consistent with theoretical hypotheses that public support for agriculture is affected by the mass media. In particular, an increase in media (television) diffusion is associated with policies that benefit the majority to a greater extent and is correlated with a reduction in agriculture taxation in poor countries and a reduction in the subsidization of agriculture in rich countries, ceteris paribus. The empirical results are consistent with the hypothesis that increased competition in commercial media reduces transfers to special interest groups and contributes to more efficient public policie

Subsidies and agricultural productivity in the EU

This paper investigates the relationship between EU agricultural subsidies and agricultural labor productivity growth by estimating a conditional convergence growth model. We use more representative subsidy indicators and a wider coverage (panel data from 213 EU regions over the period 2004\u20132014) than have been used before. We find that, on average, EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies increase agricultural labor productivity growth, but this aggregate effect hides important heterogeneity of effects of different types of subsidies. The positive effect on productivity comes from decoupled subsidies, that is, Pillar I decoupled payments and some Pillar II payments. Coupled Pillar I subsidies have the opposite effect: they slow down productivity growth