This paper has two purposes. It first considers the impact on world food prices of the changes in restrictions on trade in staple foods during the 2008 world food price crisis. Those changes -- reductions in import protection or increases in export restraints -- were meant to partially insulate...

To analyze the effects of prospective policy changes, sectoral and economy-wide modelers need to begin with baseline estimates of policy induced price distortions. Global trade modelers mostly use the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) protection database, which currently relies heavily on...