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. Especially in developing...

This paper provides new estimates of the global gains from multilateral trade reform and their distribution among developing countries in the presence of trade preferences. Particular attention is given to agriculture, as farmers constitute the poorest households in developing countries but are...

The claim by global trade modelers that the potential contribution to global economic welfare of removing agricultural subsidies is less than one-tenth of that from removing agricultural tariffs puzzles many observers. To help explain that result, the authors first compare the OECD and...

The linkage model of the global economy and the latest Global Trade Analysis Project (gtap) database (version 6.05) are used to examine the impact of current merchandise trade barriers and agricultural subsidies and possible reform outcomes of the World Trade Organization's (wto's) Doha...

This paper examines whether the Sub-Saharan African economies could gain from multilateral trade reform in the presence of trade preferences. The World Bank's Linkage model of the global economy is employed to examine the impact first of current trade barriers and agricultural subsidies, and...

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...

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...

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...

This paper 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 domestic markets from the...

Until the Uruguay Round, agricultural trade policies were subject to few multilateral disciplines. In this situation, the interplay of special-interest lobbying pressures resulted in this sector becoming heavily distorted. One of the great achievements of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations...