The effects of direct payments on rice income variability in Japan are analysed based on a balanced panel dataset of Japanese rice farms for 2012–2016. Firstly, the contribution of income components to rice income variability and the effects of a direct payment reduction are discussed by applying variance decomposition. Secondly, robust regression techniques are used to measure the correlation between direct payments and rice income variability. The originality of this paper is that it disaggregates the effects of payments using a regression analysis of the effects of direct payments on income variability for Japan. This contrasts with the existing literature on this topic, which has largely focused on European Union countries. This paper discusses to what degree the reduction in direct payments increases income variability. The results reveal that direct payments decrease Japanese rice income variability. Indeed, after controlling for various farm characteristics, we find a negative relationship between the amount of direct payments linked to rice production and rice income variability. Finally, the results suggest that reducing direct payments when the rice price is falling would increase rice income variability.

中文翻译：

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直接支付对日本稻米收入变异性的影响*

基于 2012-2016 年日本水稻农场的平衡面板数据集，分析了直接支付对日本水稻收入变异性的影响。首先，通过应用方差分解，讨论了收入成分对水稻收入变异性的贡献以及直接减少支付的影响。其次，稳健的回归技术用于衡量直接支付与稻米收入变异性之间的相关性。本文的独创性在于，它使用对日本直接支付对收入可变性影响的回归分析来分解支付的影响。这与现有的关于该主题的文献形成鲜明对比，后者主要集中在欧盟国家。本文讨论了直接支付的减少在多大程度上增加了收入的可变性。结果表明，直接支付降低了日本大米收入的可变性。事实上，在控制了各种农场特征后，我们发现与稻米生产相关的直接支付金额与稻米收入可变性之间存在负相关关系。最后，结果表明，当大米价格下跌时减少直接支付会增加大米收入的可变性。