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 reform prospects have generated debate about the impacts on poverty. Some critics assert that price changes induced by trade reform are minimal and may not be distinguishable from price fluctuations induced by other shocks to the global economy. This paper addresses this issue by...

This paper presents a validation experiment of a global CGE trade model widely used for analysis of trade liberalization. We focus on the ability of the model to reproduce price volatility in wheat markets. The literature on model validation is reviewed with an eye towards designing an...

With the advent of the WTO’s Doha Development Agenda, as well as the MillenniumDevelopment Goals aiming to reduce poverty by 50 percent by 2015, poverty impacts oftrade reforms have attracted increasing attention. This has been particularly true ofagricultural trade reform due to the...

The poverty effects and in particular the impact of trade liberalization on smallholder livestock producers in African and South East Asian developing countries (Malawi, Zambia, Uganda, Mozambique, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Philippines) is addressed by disaggregating income sources...

Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models are increasingly used for global trade policy analyses. This thesis addresses three issues that have arisen in this context. The first is the question of model validation: Do these models capture the kind of behavior actually observed in markets? The...

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...

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...