Farm-level mathematical programming tools for agricultural policy support

摘要

The growing interest in policy support oriented research in agriculture originates from the need for policy makers of making quickly good decisions in complex situations. The dissertation focuses on some recent developments of farm-level mathematical programming models as one type of quantitative models that can be used as a tool for agricultural policy support. Mathematical programming (MP) has become an important and widely used tool for analysis in agriculture and economics, because MP models offer unique advantages over other methods of agricultural sector analysis being able to address the multivariant and highly interlinked nature of agriculture (Hazell and Norton, 1986). The dissertation discusses and applies three main types of MP models. The first type of models that is developed and often applied belongs to the normative mathematical programming (NMP) approach. During the 90’s positive mathematical programming (PMP) has become an important tool for policy analysis. More recently, the attempt to combine econometrics and mathematical programming models leads to a new field of empirical investigation, what we would like to name econometric mathematical programming (EMP).