Measuring the impact of public support, a policy evaluation methodology and applying the Policy Evaluation Methodology to Fair Act 199

Scope and method of study. The body of this dissertation is composed of three separated essays. The first essay was written with a focus on the information that is contained in the Producer Subsidy Equivalent, which can be used to analyze the effect of policy changes in several economic variables of interest. The primary goal of this research was to examine the theoretical basis of the PSE indicator and especially its limitations, as well as show the trends in support for the United States. The second essay focuses in a methodology to analyze policy changes in the agricultural sector. Essay three is an application of the Policy Evaluation Methodology to the changes produced by the Federal Agricultural Improvement Reform Act 1996. Each of these essays is to be read as a separate work and are clearly divided in the dissertation.;Findings and conclusions. For Essay I, there is valuable information embedded in the PSE indicator, that can allow to approximate the impact of domestic policies on trade. To achieve such a goal, a tool that permits to account for the vertical and horizontal price linkages between agricultural markets is needed. For Essay II, A Policy Evaluation Methodology (PEM) is developed to measure the impacts of domestic agricultural policies. The PEM considers the price transmission between agricultural input, production and output markets to estimate the distribution of the price and income support policies between producers and consumers. An index is generated which enables an across country and commodity comparison of the portion of the total government outlays received by the producers and associated trade distortion. For Essay III, The Policy Evaluation Methodology compares the impacts of agricultural policies on producers, consumers, taxpayers and trade. When analysing the effect of changes of the FAIR ACT, the effect of each policy is different from the effect of implementing the mix of policies at the same time, and even more important, the increase or decrease in the amount of transfer given is not necessarily shown in the effects of that support in the commodity market or the factor markets.