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...

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...

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

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...

Food prices in international markets spiked upward in 2008, doubling or more in a matter of months. Evidence is still being compiled on policy responses over the following two years, but lessons can be learned from the price spike in 1973, the magnitude and speed of which were similar to those...

Agricultural markets in OECD countries have long been highly distorted by government policies. Traditional weighted average aggregates of the price distortions involved, such as producer and consumer support estimates can be poor indicators of the trade restrictiveness and economic welfare...

National barriers to trade are often varied to insulate domestic markets from international price variability, especially following a sudden spike. This paper explores the extent of that behavior by governments in the case of agricultural products, particularly food staples whose prices have...

Despite recent reforms, world agricultural markets remain highly distorted by government policies. Traditional indicators of those price distortions can be poor guides to the policies' economic effects. Recent theoretical literature provides indicators of trade and welfare-reducing effects of...

For decades the world's agricultural markets have been highly distorted by national government policies, but very differently for different commodities. Hence a weighted average across countries of nominal rates of assistance or consumer tax equivalents for a product can be misleading as an...