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...

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...

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...

Trade negotiators and policy advisors are keen to know the relative contribution ofdifferent farm policy instruments to international trade and economic welfare.Nominal rates of assistance or producer support estimates are incomplete indicators,especially when (especially in developing...

A decline in governmental distortions to agricultural and other trade since the 1980s hascontributed to economic growth and poverty alleviation globally. But new modeling resultssuggest that has taken the world only three-fifths of the way towards freeing merchandisetrade, and that farm policies...

International negotiations for an agreement to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases are unlikely to produce concrete and comprehensive policies for effective emission reductions in the near term, not least because the policy measures being considered are economically very costly to major...