In the event of large swings in world food prices, countries often intervene to dampen the impact of international food price spikes on domestic prices and to lessen the burden of adjustment on vulnerable population groups. While individual countries can succeed at insulating their domestic...

This paper views tariff-cutting formulas as a potential solution to the free-rider problem that arises when market opening is negotiated bilaterally and extended on a most-favored-nation basis. The negotiators in the Doha Agenda chose formulas that are ideal from an economic efficiency viewpoint...

This survey concludes that including agriculture in the Doha Agenda negotiations was important both economically and politically, although the political resistance to reform is particularly strong in this sector. While agriculture accounts for less than 10 percent of merchandise trade, high and...

This paper uses detailed data on bound and applied tariffs to assess the consequences of the World Trade Organization?s December 2008 Modalities for tariffs levied and faced by developing countries, and the welfare implications of these reforms. The authors find that the tiered formula for...

Traditional weighted-average measures of trade distortions are widely used in analyzing global and regional reforms, despite well-known deficiencies. This paper develops and applies optimal aggregators for the real-world case of multiple countries and commodities with much more detailed...

Many trade negotiations involve large cuts in high tariffs, with flexibilities allowing much smaller cuts for an agreed number of politically-sensitive products. The effects of these flexibilities on market access opportunities are difficult to predict, creating particular problems for...