Until recently, most grape-based wine was consumed close to where it was produced, and mostly that was in Europe. Now more than two-fifths of all wine consumed globally is produced in another country, including in the Southern Hemisphere, the USA and Asia. This latest edition of global wine...

Nearly all countries tax the domestic consumption of alcoholic beverages. However, the rates of taxation, and the tax instruments used, vary enormously between countries. This paper provides estimates, for a wide range of high-income and developing countries, of the consumer tax equivalents...

Until recently, most grape-based wine was consumed close to where it was produced, and mostly that was in Europe. Now more than two-fifths of all wine consumed globally is produced in another country, including in the Southern Hemisphere, the USA and Asia. This latest edition of global wine...

Recently the Bank has provided new indicators for monitoring the extent to which agricultural policies restrict international trade in farm goods. They come from two studies with differing methodologies and data sources, and each provides less-than-perfect estimates. This note shows how and...

The development of genetically modified (GM) agricultural products requires new policies to manage potential food safety and environmental risks. The policy positions taken to date on GM foods by the United States and the European Union are very different. The US has few restrictions on...

A decline in governmental distortions to agricultural and other trade since the 1980s hascontributed to economic growth and poverty alleviation globally. But new modeling resultssuggest that has taken the world only three-fifths of the way towards freeing merchandisetrade, and that farm policies...

For decades, earnings from farming in many developing countries have been depressed by a pro-urban bias in own-country policies, as well as by governments of richer countries favouring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies reduced global economic welfare and...