Objectives and Constraints of Government Policy: The Countercyclicity of Transfers to Agriculture
通过回归分析美国玉米、小麦和棉花农场的政府转移支付与市场收入，发现农民在市场条件不利时获得更多转移支付，且这种逆周期性与潜在的无谓损失无关，并指出主流政治经济模型因忽视政治主体目标而难以解释这一现象。
Abstract Estimates of government transfers to typical U.S. corn, wheat, and cotton farms are regressed on estimates of market‐derived farm income to show that U.S. farmers receive greater government transfers when they face relatively unfavorable market conditions. This transfer countercyclicity is shown to be unrelated to potential deadweight losses constraining government transfers. It is argued that prevailing political economy models have difficulty explaining transfer countercyclicity because they focus on political agents' constraints to the neglect of political agents' objectives.