Theme 5 Plenary paper 2 The political economy of commodity and public good policies in European agriculture: Implications for policy reform GORDON C. RAUSSER and HARRY DE GORTER* Summary/Resume Public policies are often classified as falling into two conceptually distinct categories: productive policies which are designed to provide public goods (PERTs) and predatory policies which are primarily intended to affect redistri- bution (PESTs). Governments engage in both types of policies simultaneously when there exist interactions between the consequences of the two types of policies. They must be chosen jointly. Failure to recognize the interactions between the effects of the two policies and failure to recognize the consequent jointness in the policy selection process can lead to misinterpretation of the effectiveness of each policy. Within this context, we explore the interrelatedness of public good policies and redistributive policies in European agriculture. We discuss the implications for reform of both types of policies. Keywords: political economy, public goods, income transfers. Les politiques economiques sont souvent classees en deux categories conceptuel- lement distinctes: politiques productives destinies a procurer des biens publics (PERT) et politiques dont I'objectif est d'organiser la redistribution (PEST). Les gouvernements entreprennent ces deux types de politique parallelement et s'il y a des interactions entre elles, elles doivent etre engagees ensemble. Si Von ne tient pas compte de I'interaction entre les effets de ces politiques et si I'on ne suit pas le choix de politiques qu'elle suggere, on peut se meprendre sur I'efficacite de chacune d'elles. Ce cadre conceptuel est utilise pour explorer les interrelations entre les politiques de bien publics et redistributive dans I'agriculture europeenne et le type de reforme a proposer. Mots-cles: economie politique, biens publics, transferts de revenu. * University of California, Berkeley, and Cornell University. The authors acknowledge the many helpful discussions with David J. Nielson. Euro. R. agr. Eco. 18 (1991) 485-504 0165-1587/91 /0018-0485 $2.00 © Walter de Gruyter, Berlin at University of California, Berkeley on January 7, 2013 http://erae.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from