This paper shows that research on international agricultural trade reform can make much greater contributions to understanding than was feasible in earlier trade negotiations. Part of this is due to improvements in the basic data on production, consumption and trade associated with the...

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, this paper first compares the OECD and...

Trade policy reforms in recent decades have sharply reduced the distortions that wereharming agriculture in developing countries, yet global trade in farm products continues to befar more distorted than trade in nonfarm goods. Those distortions reduce some forms ofpoverty and inequality but...

The Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) was a key issue in the July 2008 failure to reach agreement in the WTO negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda. It includes both price (P-SSM) and quantity-triggered measures (Q-SSM). This paper uses a stochastic simulation model of the world wheat...

Climate volatility affects agricultural variability, and extreme climate outcomes have the potential to detrimentally affect food supply and prices in a given country. International trade has the potential to reduce the impacts of climate-induced food production variability, although it may...

The proximate cause of the collapse of the Doha Agenda negotiations in 2008 was disagreement over the volume-based Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM). This measure would provide a right, but not an obligation, for developing countries to impose a duty when imports increase. While many simulations...

While agriculture's contribution to national output and employment tends to decline with economic growth, its contribution to exports need not. Neoclassical theory suggests that a country's comparative advantage in agriculture depends on its endowment of agricultural land relative to mineral...

Despite reforms over the past quarter-century, world agricultural markets remain highly distorted by government policies. Traditional indicators of those price distortions such as the nominal rate of assistance and consumer tax equivalent provide measures of the degree of intervention, but they...

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...

For decades, agricultural price and trade policies in Sub-Saharan Africa hamperedfarmers’ contributions to economic growth and poverty reduction. While there hasbeen much policy reform over the past two decades, the injections of agriculturaldevelopment funding, together with on-going regional...