Dynamic modelling of agricultural policies : the role of expectation schemes

The highly disputed effects of agricultural trade liberalization are mostly simulated with static models. Our main objective in this paper is to evaluate the robustness of the static simulation results to the consistent modeling of dynamic behaviors and to the linked specification of price/return expectations. Focusing on a complete trade liberalization scenario of arable crop markets by developed countries, we find that available static results are quite robust to dynamic specifications and to most expectation schemes. Endogenous market fluctuations due to expectation errors may appear following trade liberalization. These fluctuations are nevertheless limited by the many feedback effects revealed by our general equilibrium framework.