AGRICULTURAL POLICY PREFERENCES: WHEAT IN THE UNITED STATES, 1981-1990

Abstract

This paper outlines DEBET (Decision Based Economic Theory), a method for determining revealed preferences of governments. DEBET is applied to US wheat policy decisions in the 1980s. This method has a number of advantages over alternative approaches to the analysis of revealed preferences of government. It makes use of information contained in policy alternatives contemplated but not agreed upon, and it is suitable for modeling the discrete - continuous choice problem of policy makers in a multi-instrument context.Agricultural and Food Policy,