ABSTRACT
This paper considers the role of storage-based price supports as instruments of farm policy in a changing usasfet environment. A contrast is drawn between the meaning of stabilization in single-period models and in more realistic models with explicit intertemporal links, including storage. In the latter, the distinction between comparative statics and dynamics is crucial. The interpretation of price supports as a means of achieving transfers to producers is properly a question of dynamic incidence. Gains to producers occur as junps in asset 'values when a price-support scheme is announced, and these gains are different from those implied in traditional comparative statics calculations.
Other rationales for storage-based price supports are also discussed, including arguments based an their stabilizing effects. In this contest, attention is drawn to the interaction of dcmsstic policy with the evolution of the International marketplace.
