The Brazilian sugar and ethanol story goes like this: direct market intervention overrides market forces. Markets undergo dramatic change. Intervention establishes vested interests. Rent-seeking blocks adjustment to market change. Economic objectives become blurred behind political objectives....

Reviewing cross-country experience with sugar policies, and policy reform, the authors conclude that long-standing government interventions - rooted in historical trade arrangements, fear of shortages, and conflicting interests between growers, and sugar mills - often displace both the markets,...

In 1987 the European Community began the ambitious task of forging a single market for goods and services across the national borders of its member states by 1992. Substantive reform of the Community's Common Agricultural Policy - necessary for the full integration of existing markets - has not...

The Mexican sugar industry operates under strict government controls. The sugar parastatal, AZUCAR, and other state agencies govern virturally all aspects of pricing and, until recently, AZUCAR controlled virtually all aspects of marketing. The purpose of this study is to make transparent the...

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 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,...

On July 1, 1993 the European Union (EU) adopted a unified banana policy that is even more distortionary and costly than some of the disparate national policies it replaced. Before, some EU countries gave preferred market access and high prices to banana producers from selected developing...

Some European Community (EC) countries give preferred market access and high prices to bananas from selected developing countries or EC regional suppliers. This preferential status is regarded as a form of aid to these countries, most of which are developing small island economies. EC marketers...