Agricultural trade restrictiveness in the European Union and the United States

The article provides a summary measure of the Uruguay Round tariff reduction commitments in the European Union and the United States, using the Mercantilistic Trade Restrictiveness Index (MTRI) as the tariff aggregator. We compute the index for agricultural commodity aggregates assuming a specific (constant elasticity of substitution) functional form for import demand. The levels of the MTRI under the actual commitments of the Uruguay Round are computed and compared with two hypothetical cases, a deeper cut in higher tariffs and a uniform reduction of each tariff, both leading to the same average reduction as in the Uruguay Round. This makes it possible to infer how reducing tariff dispersion will help improve market access in future trade agreements, and provides some guidelines for aggregating detailed tariffs in trade models. Copyright 2005 International Association of Agricultural Economics.