Measuring the social costs of suboptimal combinations of policy instruments: A general framework and an example
提出一个简单可行的方法来寻找最优政策工具组合，并首次提供衡量次优组合社会成本的通用方法，以美国五种主要农作物为例说明。
Abstract Since most agricultural programs employ two or more policy instruments simultaneously, it is notable thai little research has attempted to find optimal instrument combinations and no research exists which evaluates the social costs (unrealized benefits) of combining instruments suboptimally. In our paper we report a simple and feasible method to find optimal policy instrument combinations, and we provide the first general, formal approach to measuring the social costs of suboptimal policy instrument combinations. Our approach is illustrated in an analysis for live major U.S. crops (corn, feed grains, wheat, rice, cotton). The simple model we employ for the illustration suggests that except lor the feed grains program, the observed programs combined policy instruments quite suboptimally. We conclude that agricultural economics research now can and should begin placing increased emphasis on studying optimal policy instrument combinations.