Author
Atwood, Joseph
Agricultural producers have access to numerous subsidized federal crop insurance products. A debate exists as to whether these products are used primarily for income transfers through premium subsidies and high loss ratios rather than for risk management. We compare Risk Management Agency stated premium subsidies to realized premium subsidies to identify opportunities to reduce federal outlays. We find substantial acreage and crop insurance participation for certain crops even when income enhancement does not occur and verify the results using simulations. Substantial reductions in federal outlays can occur using cro- and region-specific reductions in realized subsidies while maintaining risk management opportunities.
In December 2017, the Craft Beverage and Modernization Tax Reform Act (CBMTRA) lowered federal beer excise taxes for a period of 2 years, and the Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Tax Act of 2020 made the reduction permanent. We evaluate the ramifications of the CBMTRA on producers, consumers, and tax receipts and quantify potential differential effects among the micro, regional, and macro brewing sectors. Although the excise tax reduction was supposed to primarily support the micro brewing sector, we find that the CBMTRA provided a larger combined benefit to the regional and macro brewing sectors.
Over 90% of U.S. corn and soybeans are planted with genetically modified (GM) seed varieties. We use a flexible, nonlinear functional form to investigate yield differences for corn, soybeans, and wheat between the United States and the European Union (which bans the use of GM technologies). U.S. corn and soybean yields increased relative to EU yields since the introduction of GM technologies. EU wheat yields (for which GM technologies are not commercially available in either region) continue to increase relative to the United States. Thus, the EU ban on GM technologies has likely increased the difference between corn and soybean yields between the two regions.