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...

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...

During the 1960s and 1970s most developing countries imposed anti-agricultural policies, while many high-income countries restricted agricultural imports and subsidized their farmers. Both sets of policies inhibited economic growth and poverty alleviation in developing countries, while doing...

This paper describes agricultural policy choices and tests some predictions of political economy theories. It begins with three broad stylized facts: governments tend to tax agriculture in poorer countries, and subsidize it in richer ones, tax both imports and exports more than nontradables, and...