Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) tariffs on U.S. potato imports to Mexico were phased out by 1993. Citing phytosanitary issues, in 1996, the Mexican government placed quantitative restrictions on U.S. potato imports and restricted their import only to designated border...

U.S.-Asian trade currently represents about 35% of the total value of U.S. agricultural and food trade. Country-by-country comparisons show significant differences in level of food safety regulations in the U.S., Japan, newly industrialized countries in Asia, and Asian developing countries....

Globalization of the food system is shaped by demand trends that bring about deep integration of agricultural production and marketing. As diets and food quality become more similar around the world, risks are shared across borders, creating global public "goods" and "bads." Examples of globally...

The current debate on trade liberalization is accompanied by an increased concern about environmental and food safety issues leading to frictions of different country groups under the World Trade Organization (WTO). This discussion paper aims at shedding more light on some of the issues in the...

Economic theory posits that the removal of impediments to trade should redound to improvement in the overall well-being of all nations. Unfortunately, for many developing countries, this has not been the case; upon significantly reducing their tariffs, they are yet to see any tangible benefits....

There have been a number of high profile food safety disputes in trade over the past decade. These include the widely publicized dispute at the World Trade Organization between the U.S. and EU over hormone treated beef. Consumers in some industrialized countries have also expressed concern over...

While China’'s economic reform has brought about significant economic growth, there is a considerable debate about the impact of such market-oriented reform on income and welfare distributions. This paper examines the changes in income and welfare distributions in urban China from 1981 to 1998...

Rice sector contributes significantly to secure households with regard to their food needs but also to the creation of employments and income generation. The sector development and its evolution over the years have been marked by various policies and approaches. These development stages of the...

This paper evaluates the production and trade trends for maize and maize products in southern Africa, individual countries’ revealed comparative advantages in producing these products, and the expected implications of freer trade in this sector. The analysis employs mainly annual bilateral...

Commercial rice imports have accounted for approximately 61%, food aid in rice accounted for about 2%, and domestic rice accounted for some 37% per annum of rice consumption in Ghana over the four years between 2000 and 2003. Compared to the 1990s, these figures show a gradual decline in the...