The agricultural and food sector is an ideal case for investigating the political economy of public policies. Many of the policy developments in this sector since the 1950s have been sudden and transfirmational, while others have been gradual but persistent. This article reviews and synthesizes...

A new round of WTO negotiations on agriculture, services and perhaps some other issues is expected to be launched in late 1999. To what extent should those negotiations include so-called "new trade agenda" items aimed at ensuring that domestic regulatory policies do not discriminate against...

Notwithstanding the tariffication component of the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture, import tariffs on farm products continue to provide an incomplete indication of the extent to which agricultural producer and consumer incentives are distorted in national markets. As well, in developing...

Les debats actuels sur les organismes genetiquement modifies (OGM) dans l'agriculture montrent des divergences dans la perception des risques et des benefices lies au genie genetique. Les OGM peuvent beneficier aux pays pauvres comme riches, mais ils soulevent des questions de securite sanitaire...

The agricultural and food sector is an ideal case for investigating the political economy of public policies. Many of the policy developments in this sector since the 1950s have been sudden and transformational, while others have been gradual but persistent. This article reviews and synthesizes...

Historically, 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...

When prices spike in international grain markets, national governments often reduce the extent to which that spike affects their domestic food markets. Those actions exacerbate the price spike and international welfare transfer associated with that terms of trade change. Several recent analyses...

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...

The recent upward spike in the international price of food led some countries to raise export barriers. As in previous price spike periods, that response by some food-exporting countries was accompanied by a lowering of import restrictions by numerous food-importing countries. Both actions...

When prices spike in international grain markets, national governments often reduce the extent to which that spike affects their domestic food markets. Those actions exacerbate the price spike and international welfare transfer associated with that terms of trade change. Several recent analyses...