DISTRIBUTIONAL IMPACTS OF CAP ADOPTION ON ROMANIAN HOUSEHOLDS /доклад на 10 конгрессе ЕААЕ, Exploring Diversity in the European Agri-Food System, Zaragoza, Spain, 28-31 August 2002

This paper focuses on estimation of distributional economic welfare effects of the adoption of the CAP on different groups of Romanian households. The calculations of welfare effects are based on 1999 household data and refer to a 10-fold breakdown of Romanian households, i.e. five socio-economic categories from urban and rural areas, taking into account own (home) production of food. To identify the most vulnerable groups of Romanian consumers to food price changes, the Slutsky approximation Compensating Variation approach is applied. The results suggest that, if the current CAP is adopted and results in food price changes averaging a 10 per cent increase in all food prices, the lowest-income groups (i.e. urban and rural unemployed households, urban pensioner households) will be the most affected, ceteris paribus (prices of all other goods held constant). The minimum amount by which the groups could be compensated for the effect of price change on their real incomes varies between Euro 3 per month for employers’ households (about 1% of total income) and about Euro 8 per month for farmers’ households (6%). However, due to the relatively large shares of food self-production in total consumption, in particular by rural households, somewhat smaller money compensation would be appropriate.