This working paper summarizes the annual estimates, for each of the world's main high-income countries, of key distortion indicators defined in Anderson et al. (2008), and provides some summary statistics for the group's estimates. It begins with tables for the countries of Western Europe,...

Over the past two decades, the Australian wine industry has been through a remarkable period of export-oriented growth. Even when vines for drying and table grapes are included, the vineyard area in Australia has trebled over the 20 vintages to 2008, the biggest surge in AustraliaÂ’s history....

Food prices in international markets spiked upward in 2008, doubling or more in a matter of months. Evidence is still being compiled on policy responses over the following two years, but lessons can be learned from the price spike in 1973, the magnitude and speed of which were similar to those...

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 favoring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies, which reduce national and global economic welfare and...

National barriers to trade are often varied to insulate domestic markets from international price variability, especially following a sudden spike. This paper explores the extent of that behavior by governments in the case of agricultural products, particularly food staples whose prices have...

This paper analyzes the economic effects of agricultural price and merchandise trade policies around the world as of 2004 on global markets, net farm incomes, and national and regional economic welfare and poverty, using the global economy wide Linkage model, new estimates of agricultural price...

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...

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...

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...