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...

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...

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...

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...

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 the terms of trade change. Several recent analyses...