For individual countries, variable trade barriers can be used to reduce the volatility of domestic relative to world prices. If this is done by countries accounting for a large share of the market, its effect is offset by increases in world price volatility. This study shows the nature of the...

Trade negotiators and policy advisors are keen to know the relative contribution of different farm policy instruments to international trade and economic welfare. Nominal rates of assistance or producer support estimates are incomplete indicators, especially when (especially in developing...

For decades, agricultural price and trade policies in Sub-Saharan Africa hampered farmers’ contributions to economic growth and poverty reduction. While there has been much policy reform over the past two decades, the injections of agricultural development funding, together with on-going...

Trade policy reforms in recent decades have sharply reduced the distortions that were harming agriculture in developing countries, yet global trade in farm products continues to be far more distorted than trade in nonfarm goods. Those distortions reduce some forms of poverty and inequality but...

East Asia has rapidly become the third centre of gravity for global economic activity. North America is relatively well integrated with East Asia, but Europe is not. This paper explores the extent to which economic growth and trade policy developments over the next decade or so will strengthen...

We construct a three-country, two-bloc, multi-product trade model in which tariff agreements between customs union members are binding whereas inter-bloc tariff agreements are self-enforcing. Our main objective is to explore how the liberalization of trade between customs union members (i.e. the...

Social policies are likely to have an ever-more prominent role in trade policy discussions in the years ahead for the new World Trade Organization (WTO). Many developing countries perceive the entwining of these social issues with trade policy as a threat to both their sovereignty and their...

The paper sees countertrade - the tying of trade flows - as an insurance contract that mitigates contractual hazards and reduces the incentive for ex post `hold-up' when parties are `locked' in a relationship after they have made specific investment. This way tying is seen as a commitment device...

This is one of ten studies for the Copenhagen Consensus Project that sought to evaluate the most feasible opportunities to improve welfare globally and alleviate poverty in developing countries. It argues that phasing out distortionary government subsidies and barriers to international trade...

Many commentators purport to use the Kemp-Wan Theorem to discuss the effects of regional integration schemes on non-member countries, and to operationalize the theorem in terms of the share of member countries' imports from non-members. This paper shows that Kemp and Wan (1976) say nothing about...