The Goals of U.S. Agricultural Policy: A Mechanism Design Approach
用机制设计方法分析政府补贴农业的三种目标：保障农民最低净收入、向农业转移收入、以及包含非市场价值的收入转移，解释了为何政策会导致高成本生产者过度生产。
Abstract This article examines motivations underlying the government's choice of alternative policy mechanisms for subsidizing agriculture. Optimal policies are analyzed for three government objectives: one where the government wishes to ensure a minimum level of net income for all farmers, a second where the government's only concern is to transfer income from consumers and taxpayers to the farm sector, and a final “augmented” income‐transfer objective. The analysis offers an explanation for agricultural policy mechanisms that involve overproduction by high‐cost producers, relative to a free‐market equilibrium. Such a distortion might arise from the existence of nonmarket values for the production of relatively high‐cost farmers in the government's objective.