Domestic technical measures such as SPS and TBTs can enhance import demand via information disclosure and quality improvement, or hamper foreign export supply via imposing sizeable compliance costs, or both. The traditional gravity equation model estimates the net effect of these measures on...

This paper presents promising methodologies for modeling and quantifying nontariff barriers (NTB) to trade in the agricultural and food sectors. We limit the analysis to sanitary, phytosanitary, and technical regulations that can have an impact on trade and to methods that provide some...

This paper presents a new partial-equilibrium, multi-market international model developed to analyze policies affecting peanut products markets. The model covers four goods (food-quality peanuts, crush-quality peanuts, peanut oil, and groundnut cake) in 13 countries/regions (Argentina, Canada,...

We analyze the impact of trade liberalization, removal of production subsidies, and elimination of consumption distortions in world sugar markets using a partial-equilibrium international sugar model calibrated on 2002 market data and current policies. The removal of trade distortions alone...

The double-dividend debate evolves around the possibility (or not) of substituting environmental taxes for more distortionary taxes to reduce both pollution degradation and/or damages (the first dividend) and the excess burden of existing taxes (the second dividend), without eroding tax...

We analyze the potential impact of continuing the existing U.S. sugar program, replacing it with a standard program, and implementing the standard program with multilateral trade liberalization. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), duty-free sugar imports from Mexico will...

This paper provides a formal analysis of the welfare and trade implications of eco-labeling schemes. A simple model of vertical (quality) differentiation captures major stylized features of the textiles market in which trading takes place between an industrialized North (domestic) and a...

The value-of-statistical-life (VSL) approach is used by environmental economists to value mortality changes resulting from environmental improvement, such as decreased urban air pollution. Because of scarce data, VSL estimates are not available for developing countries. Using robust regression...

The next three-year World Trade Organization round has been set in motion by recent negotiations in Doha, Qatar. Among the most contentious issues in that meeting, and probably over the course of the next round, is direct and indirect producer support for agricultural exporters in the North and...

We use the global Linkage model to assess the impact of trade and support policies in agriculture on income, trade, and output patterns. We provide order-of-magnitude estimates of the impacts of policy changes rather than point estimates. Two sets of simulations are used to identify key drivers...