Common Agricultural Policy uses a large share of its budget to support and stabilise the income of EU farmers by means of direct payments (DP). This paper assesses how much and how DP reduce the variability of farm income over time. The analysis is developed on a constant sample of 2402 Italian farms during the decade 2003-2012. It considers both the whole sample and farms grouped according to: types of farming; economic size classes; relative importance of DP. Income variability is analysed by mean of variance decomposition by income components. Variability of farm income over time is high and most of it is coming from the revenue component. The DP stabilise farm income and this is mainly because DP are less variable than the remaining part of income. Indeed, DP are found to play a very limited countercyclical role against fluctuations of the remaining part of farm income. Finally, DP are not targeted to those farms facing the highest level of income variability. These latter two results suggest that, while DP stabilise farm income, there is a potentially large room of manoeuvre for increasing the efficiency of DP as income stabilising tool.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess how direct payments (DPs) of the Common Agricultural Policy affect income and revenue variability faced by Italian farmers. Design/methodology/approach Balanced farm-level panel data are used to construct coefficients of variation over the period 2003-2012. Nonlinear robust regression techniques are used to measure the effect of DP, farm size, fixity in resources, labor intensity, farm production orientation, and specialization on the variability of farm income (FI) and farm revenue. This is done on the overall sample as well as on subsamples of farms located in different regions and belonging to different types of farming. Findings DPs have mixed effects on the variability of FI. While a negative and significant relationship is found on the whole national sample, this is not generally the case when models are run on the considered subsamples. On the contrary, DPs have always significant variability increasing effects on revenue. This suggests that DPs reduce the degree of risk that farmers face allowing them to engage in riskier activities. Thus, DPs are less effective than expected in terms of income stabilization because these distort farmers’ risk management behavior. Because of this, DPs could constrain the development of markets for risk management instruments and reduce the effectiveness of policies supporting the use of these instruments. Originality/value The analysis is inspired by El Benni et al. (2012) but uses a different approach, applies it to a different country, and yields different results. Volatility measures are calculated over more years, and the paper accounts for differences in farm production orientation and is not based on an unbalanced panel of farms. Because of these differences, the authors obtained different results regarding the correlation between DP and income and, even more, revenue variability. Finally, comparing the results of models referring to FI and farm revenue improves the author’s understanding of the impact of DP on farmers’ risk management behavior and allows interesting policy considerations.

One of the objectives of agricultural policy worldwide concerns the support of farm income. Common Agricultural Policy direct payments (DPs) are the main instruments to support farm income in the European Union. This article addresses their role in the concentration of farm income. This is done by calculating the Gini coefficient and its disaggregation in a large sample of Italian farms in the period between 2006 and 2007. Although this approach has been used to develop ex‐post analysis in previous studies, this article is innovative given that it is used here in an ex ante analysis aimed at evaluating the likely impact of a recent reform proposal. This latter requests changing the current model to a regional model of DPs application to make payment rates (i.e., payment per hectare) homogeneous among farms in the same region.The analysis shows that DPs and farm incomes are both very concentrated but that DPs allow for an income concentration reduction in Italian farms. The shift to a regional implementation reduces DPs concentration and, to a limited extent, farm income concentration. Of the considered regionalization scenarios, those that redistribute DPs among regions are the most effective in reducing concentration. The extension of the Gini considered approach to an ex ante setting seems effective because it provides insights that could feed the policy debate regarding the forthcoming reform.

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