The “Populism” Policy and Building/Diminishing Economic “Inequality” and “Unfairness”: Empirical Suggestion on Pork-Barrel in Thailand’s Rice Trading Business

Abstract

This research objective is to demonstrate the pork-barrel in Thailand’s rice trading business among rice farmers, millers, and exporters, under the conduct of the government before and after its populism policy, which has created pork-barrel in a way that has built or diminished economic inequality as well as unfairness. With regression analysis, we found that the benefit sharing structural model among rice farmers, millers, and exporters, before the policy implementation indicates a proportion of 68-2-30, whereas it becomes 17-22-61 after the implementation. After classifying the populism policy as two different regimes of paddy pledging and rice farmer income guarantee, it is observed that the benefit sharing structural model for the paddy pledging scheme is 17-22-61, which shows a tendency to generate deeper economic inequality and unfairness than that under the rice farmer income guarantee scheme, which seems to mitigate such problem at the benefit sharing of 87-4-9.

Keywords: Populism policy, Thailand’s rice trading business, Rice farmer income guarantee, Rice pledging