Nikomborirak (2020) aims to examine the emergence and persistence of populist policies and their implications on economic productivity as well as fiscal sustainability in Thailand. In her paper, populist policies are well‐described by picking up three case studies: the “rice‐pledging scheme,” the “first‐car‐buyer tax rebate scheme” and the “welfare card for the poor scheme.” From a political economy perspective, the content of Nikomborirak's paper should be highly appreciated. There is, however, some room for the development of the paper's analyses, when the paper is treated as an academic and empirical study in the field of pure “economics.” Thus, what follows are not direct comments on Nikomborirak, but are some suggestions for further enriching the paper's content.

Nikomborirak's paper seems to have some gaps and jumps between macro and micro arguments, and, thus, some empirical evidence could be provided to fill the gaps to qualify the study. In section 1, Nikomborirak (2020) observes that the growth rate of Thailand's gross domestic product (GDP) has entered a persistent lower trend and even the phase of the “middle‐income trap.” Nikomborirak suggests that the main challenges have come from the declines in productivity, competitiveness and efficiency in Thailand's economy, and argues that the rise of populist policies is the main factor contributing to market distortions that lead to these challenges. There seems, however, to be a weak linkage between the macroeconomic suppressed performances and microeconomic distortions caused by populist policies. One way to show an empirical linkage is, for instance, to identify the industrial sectors whose markets have been distorted by populist policies, to check the productivities of the distorted industrial sectors (see e.g. Fukao, 2010, for the sectoral studies of productivities in Japan), and to finally clarify the negative contributions of the distorted sectors to total productivity.

Nikomborirak also argues that the populist policies have imposed heavy fiscal burdens and endangered fiscal sustainability. As far as the fiscal indicators for 2005–2018 are concerned, however, there appears to have been nothing serious in that the debt service‐budget rate and the public debt‐GDP ratio have been under the thresholds of 15% and 50%, respectively, although the period includes the times when the populist policies that Nikomborirak describes have been implemented. It would be informative if the total negative contributions of the populist policies to the fiscal imbalance were calculated in quantitative ways, so that Nikomborirak's micro case studies of populist policies can be linked with their macro fiscal repercussions. In what follows, I have some additional suggestions for Nikomborirak's case studies of individual populist policies.

Nikomborirak emphasizes the negative effects of the rice‐pledging scheme as the scheme ended up with public spending of 1.1 trillion baht and a net loss of 682 billion baht, the equivalent of 3.8% of GDP in 2013. When it comes to the issue of rice production, it would usually provoke debate on two options: price compensation or income compensation for farmers, based on market failure arguments. The evidence would be enriched if a comparative study were conducted by using a computable general equilibrium model that showed the social welfare losses of the Thai Rak Thai Party's rice‐pledging scheme were larger than those of the Democratic Party's income guarantees.

Nikomborirak identifies the first‐car‐buyer tax rebate scheme as another populist policy. At the same time, she also states that its objective was to pump‐prime the economy after the 2009 Global Financial Crisis that resulted in a GDP growth rate of −2.3% in 2009. As economics textbooks tell us, the basic roles of economic policies are macroeconomic stabilization and income redistribution as well as the allocation of resources. This scheme is, in a sense, classified into a so‐called demand management policy for macroeconomic stabilization, whose purpose is to minimize the “loss function,” namely, the deviations from targeted GDP and inflation. If Nikomborirak simply argued that all the short‐sighted policies were populist polices, then all demand management policies could be the populist polices. From an economics perspective, some evidence is required to show that the market distortion effect of this scheme exceeds the positive effect of minimizing the loss function, if the scheme were completely rejected as just being a populist policy.

Nikomborirak also identifies the military government's welfare card for the poor scheme as being a populist policy. In this scheme, individuals with an income below a given threshold are eligible for a prepaid card with a specific monetary value that can be used to purchase products. In a sense, this scheme might be something like a “negative income tax” or the Earned Income Tax Credit adopted in the USA. As stated earlier, income redistribution is one of the roles of economic policies, and a negative income tax is, in general, considered to lead to a less‐distorted tax system. Since Nikomborirak cannot say that all the income redistribution policies are populist policies, some objective criteria are required for defining “populist” income distribution policies, for instance, from the viewpoint of the degree of distortion and social welfare losses.

Nikomborirak（2020）旨在研究民粹主义政策的出现和持续性及其对泰国经济生产率和财政可持续性的影响。在她的论文中，民粹主义政策通过三个案例研究得到了很好的描述：“集资计划”，“首次购车者退税计划”和“穷人福利卡”。从政治经济学的角度看，尼康博里拉克论文的内容应受到高度赞赏。但是，当论文被视为纯粹的“经济学”领域的学术和实证研究时，论文的分析仍有一定的发展空间。因此，以下内容不是对Nikomborirak的直接评论，而是对进一步丰富本文内容的一些建议。

Nikomborirak的论文似乎在宏观论证和微观论证之间存在差距和跳跃，因此，可以提供一些经验证据来弥补差距，以使研究合格。在第1节，尼康布里亚拉克（2020）观察到，泰国国内生产总值（GDP）的增长率已进入持续下降的趋势，甚至进入了“中等收入陷阱”阶段。Nikomborirak认为主要挑战来自泰国经济的生产力，竞争力和效率的下降，并认为民粹主义政策的兴起是导致导致这些挑战的市场扭曲的主要因素。但是，宏观经济抑制的表现与民粹主义政策造成的微观经济扭曲之间似乎没有很强的联系。显示经验联系的一种方法是，例如，确定市场受到民粹主义政策扭曲的工业部门，检查扭曲的工业部门的生产率（例如，见Fukao，2010年），用于日本的生产率部门研究），并最终弄清扭曲的部门对总生产率的负面影响。

尼康博里拉克还认为，民粹主义政策施加了沉重的财政负担，并危及财政可持续性。然而，就2005-2018年的财政指标而言，似乎没有什么严重的，因为债务偿还预算率和公共债务与GDP的比率分别处于15％和50％的门槛之下。 ，尽管该时期包括实施Nikomborirak描述的民粹主义政策的时间。如果以定量的方式计算民粹主义政策对财政失衡的总负贡献，那将是有益的，这样尼康博列拉克的民粹主义政策微观案例研究就可以与其宏观财政影响联系起来。在接下来的内容中，我对Nikomborirak'有一些其他建议

Nikomborirak强调了稻谷认捐计划的负面影响，因为该计划最终导致了1.1万亿泰铢的公共支出和6820亿泰铢的净亏损，相当于2013年GDP的3.8％。在生产方面，通常会引发两种选择的辩论：基于市场失灵的论点，对农民的价格补偿或收入补偿。如果使用可计算的一般均衡模型进行比较研究，则该证据将得到充实，该模型表明泰爱泰党的大米认捐计划的社会福利损失大于民主党的收入保证金。

Nikomborirak将首次购车者退税计划确定为另一种民粹主义政策。同时，她还指出，其目标是在2009年全球金融危机之后推动经济增长，2009年全球金融危机导致GDP增长率为−2.3％。正如经济学教科书告诉我们的那样，经济政策的基本作用是宏观经济稳定和收入再分配以及资源分配。从某种意义上说，该计划被归类为所谓的宏观经济稳定需求管理政策，其目的是最大程度地减少“损失函数”，即与目标GDP和通货膨胀率之间的偏差。如果Nikomborirak简单地认为所有近视政策都是民粹主义政策，那么所有需求管理政策都可能是民粹主义政策。从经济学的角度来看，

尼康布里亚拉克（Nikomborirak）还指出，军政府针对贫困计划的福利卡是民粹主义政策。在此计划中，收入低于给定阈值的个人有资格获得可用于购买产品的具有特定货币值的预付卡。从某种意义上说，该计划可能类似于美国采用的“负所得税”或“收入所得税抵免”。如前所述，收入再分配是经济政策的作用之一，负所得税通常被认为导致税收制度的扭曲。由于Nikomborirak不能说所有收入再分配政策都是民粹主义政策，因此需要一些客观标准来定义“民粹主义”收入分配政策，例如，