The 1980s and first half of the 1990s were a very active period in the field of political economy of agricultural protection. While the past decade has witnessed a slowdown in this area, there have been very important developments on political economy in other parts of the economics profession....

This paper summarizes a new database that sheds light on the impact of trade-related policy developments over the past half century on distortions to agricultural incentives and thus also to consumer prices for food in 75 countries spanning the per capita income spectrum. Price-support policies...

This paper focuses on recent theoretical developments in political economy and what role they might play in explaining and reforming individual country and global distortions in food and agricultural markets. Four groups of forces are isolated: political governance structures emphasizing the...

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...

Britain – contrary to received wisdom – was not a free trader for most of the 1800s and, despite repeal of the Corn Laws, continued to have higher tariffs than the French until the last quarter of the century War with Louis XIV from 1689 led to the end of all trade between Britain and France...

The paper analyzes the political and institutional factors which are behind the dramatic changes in distortions to agricultural incentives in the transition countries in East Asia (China and Vietnam), Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, etc), the rest of the former Soviet Union, and in...

This paper generalizes the recent political economy model of Helpman and Grossman in which contributions by producer lobbies and government decisions about trade policies are modeled as a common agency game. We allow the government to choose among domestic as well as trade interventions. When...

Within the last two decades, 40% of rangelands in Uzbekistan have been taken out of use due to non-functioning water facilities and pasture degradation. A retrospective study of rangeland production system development in the former Soviet Union (FSU) shows that the pasture land was used more...

The paper analyses the 1996 EU food aid reform and addresses the question of its impact on improving EU food aid allocation in terms of reaching those countries which are most vulnerable to food insecurity. Using a two-stage regression model the analysis finds that EU food aid in kind is...

If property rights in land are so beneficial, why are they not adopted more widely? I propose a theory based on the idea that limited property rights over peasants' plots may be supported by elite landowners (who depend on peasants for labour) to achieve two goals. First, like other distortions...