ABSTRACT
The two measures for estimating national support of agriculture and forestry-namely, the producer support estimate (PSE) of the organisation for economic co-operation and development and the aggregate measure of support (AMS) of the world trade organisation and the general agreement on tariffs and trade -are related. The PSE criteria and the AMS are based implicitly on the philosophy or precondition that those agricultural systems that maintain cost-effective production at the lowest price level without the help of public funding are the desired objective of the universal model. The PSE has two major components: market price support and public support payments and financial burdens. Market price supports are calculated from the difference between the domestic price of agricultural goods and their price on the world market. Financial burdens on producers in the form of payments to public authorities, such as the Austrian land protection tax, essentially constitute fiscal taxes.
