The CAP’s Contribution to the Collective Welfare: A Complex Assessment

The Common Agricultural Policy would seriously damage the job market for two reasons often voiced in public debate: first, in developing countries by exercising unfair competition on agricultural product prices, and second, within the EU, by extending inadequate forms of support.

As an alternative to such arguments, Alexandre Gohin offers an analysis which takes into account the complexity of the agricultural economy. In lieu of partial analytical models, he supplements his macro-economic reasoning with the social (notably employment) and territorial aspects of CAP subsidies, thus proposing an assessment of the CAP’s actual impact on the collective well-being.