ENDOGENOUS COMMODITY POLICIES AND THE SOCIAL BENEFITS FROM PUBLIC RESEARCH EXPENDITURES

Standard analyses of social benefits of public agricultural research e xpenditures in the presence of commodity policies take the commodity p olicy as fixed. In reality governments adjust commodity policy levels when the research has important income distributional effects. We use two examples of commodity policies to analyze the consequences of endo genizing commodity policies under three alternative decision-making mo dels of government. Relaxing the assumption of fixed commodity policie s has important impacts on conclusions regarding the social benefits o f research in the presence of commodity policies.