Three Essays on the Political Economy of Agricultural Programs

• Main Author: Callahan, Scott Evans
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01.01.2017
• Subjects: Agricultural economics; Economic theory; Political science
• ISBN: 9780355634167; 0355634163

The essays apply methods of the political economy literature to the analysis of agricultural policy in the United States. Chapter one presents an analysis of summary statistics for the novel data used in the subsequent essays. These sources include individual crop subsidy transactions from the USDA Farm Services Agency, campaign contribution data from the Federal Election Commission and the data resulting from matching these two datasets to study the behavior of politically active farmers. Chapter two contains an analysis of the impact of direct campaign contributions on farm bill amendment votes seeking to reduce cotton subsidy programs. By cross referencing the names of cotton subsidy receiving farmers in the subsidy database with individual campaign contributors, politically active cotton farmers are identified. Using a simultaneous probit-tobit-tobit model, the effects of campaign contributions by both cotton political action committees and individual cotton farmers on legislative votes are estimated. Results indicate that, while cotton PAC contributions have a greater effect on legislator vote decisions than individual cotton farmers, cotton farmers follow the same contribution strategies as cotton political action committees. Chapter three contains a reduced form analysis of campaign contributions made by subsidy receiving farmers. This analysis studies the effects of relative geography on campaign contribution behavior. This is accomplished by applying a Tobit model to a panel of contributions, recording zero values not made to legislators. Results indicate that farmers appear to contribute heavily to local campaigns regardless of legislator power over agricultural policy, while the ability of legislators to influence agricultural legislation becomes a more important driver of campaign contributions to legislators in different states. Chapter four studies the political allocation of agricultural disaster subsidies. Exploiting a regime change in agricultural disaster policy which occurred with the passage of the 2008 farm bill, disaster subsidy disbursement under both the 2005-2007 Crop Disaster Program and the SURE program that ran from 2008-2014 are estimated, and the effects of political factors on subsidy disbursement are compared. Results indicate that the transition from ad-hoc emergency disaster programs to a permanent agricultural disaster program did not reduce the political allocation of agricultural disaster subsidies, affirming results from both the prior agricultural disaster subsidy and FEMA disaster relief literatures.