At the recent World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar, WTO members called for the launch of negotiations on disciplines relating to competition based on explicit consensus on modalities to be agreed at the fifth WTO ministerial meeting in 2003. WTO discussions since...

What is the effect of trade liberalization on households in developing countries? To what extent do the poor benefit when local markets are made more accommodative to international trade? The author empirically analyzes the distributional impact of trade policies on households in a low-income...

Although Brazil is the world's largest sugarcane producer, only one-third of the cane it grows is used to produce sugar; the rest is used to produce ethanol as fuel for automobiles. Still, Brazil is the world's fourth largest sugar producer. This paper asks what it would mean for Brazil and for...

The application of index numbers to disaggregated Korean footwear exports during 1974-85 suggests that binding voluntary export restraints (VERs) led to significant price increases but not to the upgrading of quality predicted in earlier theoretical analyses. The results in this paper were...

Current coffee prices are at record lows and below the cost of production for many producers in Central America. Moreover, the coffee crisis is structural, and changes in supply and demand do not indicate a quick recovery of prices. So, coffee producers in Central America are facing new...

The Agreement on Textiles and Clothing will abolish all quota restrictions in trade in textiles and clothing by the year 2005. Dismantling the quota regime represents both an opportunity (for developing countries to expand exports) and a threat (because quotas will no longer guarantee markets...

The idea of an optimal export tax on a commodity is based on the assumption that by imposing a tax, a country can improve its welfare whenit faces a downward-sloping demand curve for the commodity. The idea is thought to be particularly relevant to producers with large world market shares for...

Food policy often depends on markets and markets depend on institutions. But how good do institutions have to be before reforms can be launched? Relying on well timed surveys of agricultural prices and a joint study by the Government of Bulgaria and the World Bank on agricultural market...

The main objective of this paper is to provide estimates of the cost of moving out of subsistence for Madagascar's farmers. The analysis is based on a simple asset-return model of occupational choice. Estimates suggest that the entry (sunk) cost associated with moving out of subsistence can be...

The disparate banana import policies currently operating in member states of the European Community (EC) are inconsistent with the Community's objective of full economic integration in 1992. Under separate national legislation, widely varying banana prices apply across different member states,...