Successive Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms and trade liberalisation have led to a more market-orientated European agricultural sector, with EU commodity prices now more closely linked to world prices. As a consequence EU prices have become more volatile. Greater price volatility...

The producer support estimate (the successor to the producer support equivalent) calculated by the OECD is widely used as an indicator of distortions created by agricultural policies. In this paper we demonstrate that changes in the relative (percentage) PSE are not an accurate indicator of the...