XII. INTERPRETATION AND COMMUNICATION OF PAM RESULTS

The principal task of this chapter is to show how to interpret the results of the PAM method. Because measures of divergences can include the effects of efficient and distorting policies and of market fail ures, it is useful to know how much of the difference between private and social valuations is attributable to each influence. These issues are examined in the first section of the chapter. The second section illustrates the use of PAM results for agricultural planning analyses of commodity price, public investment, and agricultural research policies. But it is desirable to go beyond pure analytics in policy analysis. Effective analysts will draw insights from the results to explain their meaning and limitations to policy-makers. The final section discusses strategies for the communication of PAM results to policy-makers.