James T. Bonnen

Improving Information on Agriculture and Rural Life

What follows evolved out of the experience of having chaired this Associations Committee on Economic Statistics, which was organized in 1970 and was charged to examine the growing claims that various agricultural data were deteriorating.

The Future of U.S. Agricultural Policy: Reflections on the Disappearance of the “Farm Problem”

The Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act (FAIR) of 1996 continues direct subsidies on feed grains, wheat, cotton, and rice, replacing target prices with declining but fixed annual income transfers and eliminating all production controls. Tobacco, sugar, and peanut quota-based programs were continued with minor changes. Major changes were made in dairy policy including elimination of price supports and reduction of the number of marketing orders. Associated with the Act were hearings and media rhetoric some of which suggested that direct budget subsidies would or should end when the Act expires in 2002. The permanent 1949 legislation would, of course, have to be repealed for this to occur. Several interesting responses followed passage of the 1996 Act. Some general and agricultural economists, who have been consistent critics of the farm programs, celebrated with expressions implying that, now freed of distortions, agriculture would roll through the next millennium in an ideal state of grace (equilibrium?) apparently devoid of any necessity for national policy attention. Indeed, some express the belief that the 1930s farm legislation was an epic error from the start—a view common among general economists. A few agricultural economists have lamented that agricultural policy analysts would have little or nothing to do after 2002! However, especially cynical policy types noted that the 1949 permanent legislation had not been repealed and, as usual, commodity interests would use it as a club in 2002 to negotiate new and even more ingenious subsidies for politically deserving commodities. Some cynics were unkind enough to observe that, given then expected market conditions, the 1996 Act provided larger expenditures for farm subsidies than would have a simple extension of the 1990 Act. All of this leaves one wondering if anyone truly understands where we are in policy for agriculture.

Historical Sources of U.S. Agricultural Productivity: Implications for R&D Policy and Social Science Research

Well over a century of historical evidence has accumulated on U.S. agricultural development. This experience demonstrates the basic principles of a pragmatic, consciously fashioned, science-based industrialization of agriculture. Yet the current debate over agricultural research policy suggests we have learned little from that experience. Perhaps, as Boulding explains with both humor and patience, success is something from which we never recover-and never seem to learn anything. I will first review the broad lessons we

Present and Prospective Policy Problems of U.S. Agriculture: As Viewed by an Economist

W HAT is the present state of agricultural policy? Understanding the present state of affairs always involves knowing some previous state. What policy decision makers are doing today is not only conditioned but also predetermined in a major degree by the successes and failures of time past-as well as by the changing structure of our political, economic, and social institutions. I want to look at each of these matters in turn. But first, where are we today and how did we get there? Clearly we are at another node in agricultural policy. Over the decade ending in 1963 two alternative approaches to the farm problem were attempted. Both failed for lack of political acceptance. During the Eisenhower years, Secretary Benson made a valiant attempt, as he would put it, to return the farmer to the free market. Following that, the Kennedy Administration attempted to implement a system of government-run supply managment using direct mandatory controls. Both of these approaches are now denied us. What is left? One must look at the successes of these two administrations to answer this. The Eisenhower Administration presided over the creation of PL 480, the Soil Bank, and a great enlargement of domestic supplemental and special food programs. The Soil Bank was not an unalloyed success, but it was the experiment from which we have learned much of what we know today about how to withdraw land from farm production. The Kennedy Administration passed an emergency feed grain bill in 1961 which is genuinely popular with farmers and which contains several ideas since extended to wheat and now extended to cotton in the 1965 Omnibus Farm

Federal Statistical Coordination Today: A Disaster or a Disgrace?

The aim of central coordination of federal statistical policy is to assure the most efficient use of the resources of a very decentralized statistical system. This goal has become more elusive over the past thirty years, even as the need for standards and order in data bases among public and private decision makers has increased--in health, energy, justice, environmental, and various other regulatory policy areas. Shortsighted dislocations and political interference have deprofessionalized and decimated our ability to control, rather than to destroy, the governance of bureaucracy.

GETTING FROM ECONOMIC ANALYSIS TO POLICY ADVICE

Economists play several distinct but necessary roles in the process of translating economic knowledge from the discipline to use in policy decisions. Economists engaged in disciplinary research might legitimately deal with more simplified abstractions of economic problems in conducting their research, whereas those engaged in providing policy analysis and advice to policy makers might face different constraints on the types of analysis that can be used by policy makers. In the role of policy analyst or adviser, economists face a number of challenges and risks. Those preparing to engage in such roles should understand (a) the constraints that will be faced in using and communicating economic analysis to policy makers, (b) the limitations of economic theory in addressing policy issues faced by decision makers, and (c) the risks inherent in participating in the policy-making process. The economist entering the policy process must be prepared to present economic advice in a manner that is easily understood and communicated and be prepared to address dimensions of policy problems that might not comply with the standard assumptions of neoclassical theory. The policy adviser must also be prepared to deal with databases that are often inadequate for decision-making purposes, time constraints that preclude the completion of a thorough analysis, value dimensions of policy issues that might overrule the results of economic analysis, and the fundamentally different roles of the policy maker and the economic adviser in the decision-making process.

Agriculture and the Changing Nation-State: Implications for Policy and Political Economy

only the globalization of markets and related institutional and economic change but also change in the long-stable assumptions, value beliefs, and institutions that sustain our basic unit of governance: the nation-state. This in turn transforms the way in which nations and private interests pursue their political objectives both domestically and internationally. We present the case that economic and technological changes are transforming the political role of the nation-state. The integration of national economies on a global and a regional basis imposes new constraints on the capacity of the nation-state to fulfill its traditional policy roles. At the same time, technological changes are transforming national politics by fragmenting political interests along increasingly narrow lines, thereby diminishing the nationstates capacity to define and defend the national interest in the face of the escalating demands of rapidly proliferating interest groups. The result is that (a) the power of the nationstate is drifting upward toward increasingly complex networks of international institutions and nongovernment organizations and downward to subnational levels of government; (b) the c nflicting forces of global economic integration and proliferating interest group demands increase the transaction costs associated

Improving the Federal Statistical System: Report of the President's Reorganization Project for the Federal Statistical System

Unlike most other countries, the United States has a decentralized statistical system. For most of its history this system has worked well. Starting with the constitutionally mandated decennial census as a core activity, United States statistical agencies have, over the years, developed exemplary statistical programs to serve the needs of policy makers and other users in agriculture, industry, domestic and foreign trade, labor, health, education, and other areas. United States statistical agencies have pioneered in developing new technologies, such as sampling and digital computers, that have greatly expanded the ability of all nations to collect, process, and disseminate useful statistics. In recent years, however, especially during the last two decades, this decentralized statistical system has lost some of its effectiveness. Major new demands have been placed upon it and there have been significant changes in the environment in which it operates. The role of government in society and the economy has greatly expanded. Billions of dollars are allocated to state and local governments every year under legislated formulas that depend on federal statistical series. The total amount allocated by formulas has been estimated at around

Implications for Agricultural Policy

60 billion in fiscal 1979,

Providing Economic Information in an Increasingly Difficult Policy Environment

29 billion of which were allocated using just six federal statistical series. Even larger federal expenditures and a major part of private sector wages are affected by federal statistics on prices. There has been a large increase in the number of government agencies and programs requiring statistical data to support policy decisions and the evaluation of their activities. There are now more than 100 federal agencies with statistical programs. Most of the general or multipurpose data provided by the federal government come from 38 agencies that are either entirely statistical or have major programs to collect or analyze statistics. The total budget of these 38 units has grown about tenfold in real terms over the last 30 years, to