In 1990, Australia and New Zealand were ranked around 25th and 35th in terms of GNP per capita, having been the highest-income countries in the world one hundred years earlier. The poor performance over that long period contrasts markedly with that of the past 15 years, when these two economies...

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

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...

The tariff rate quota (TRQ) system was formalised in the Uruguay Round with the aim of maintaining and improving market access for agricultural products. Under this system, a lower tariff rate is applied to imports up to the quota limit, with a higher (and often prohibitive) tariff rate levied...

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...

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...

For decades, earnings from farming in many developing countries have been depressed by a pro-urban bias in own-country policies, as well as by governments of richer countries favouring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies reduced global economic welfare and...

The global database developed as an integral part of the World Bank's research project on Distortions to Agricultural Incentives, which is publicly available at www.worldbank.org/agdistortions, provides around 30,000 estimates of nominal rates of assistance to agricultural industries (NRAs) and...