A successful agreement on agriculture is essential for an overall agreement under the WTOÂ’s Doha trade negotiations. Reaching agreement has been difficult, and as of August 2007, much still remains to be done if a successful agreement is to be reached. We consider three of the most...

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to better understand the reasons for the dramatic reduction in the estimated potential gains to China from participation in global trade reform, and to consider the implications and some trade-policy options for China in the post-accession situation. To do...

The vast majority of the worldÂ’s poorest households depend on farming for their livelihood, as would many of the rest had prospects in agriculture not been so bleak as to force them into non-farm activities in search of a higher income. Earnings from farming have been depressed in low-income...

The WTOÂ’s Doha Development Agenda has generated demand for estimates of the potential economic consequences of global trade reform. Recent improvements in the GTAP dataset have provided a much better representation of tariff restrictions as of 2001. However, despite its use by most global...

This paper provides estimates of the economic impact of initial adoption of genetically modified (GM) cotton and of its potential impacts beyond the few countries where it is currently common. Use is made of the latest version of the GTAP database and model. Our results suggest that by following...

This paper estimates the effects on production, trade and economic welfare of current trade policy regimes throughout the world on Uganda relative to other economies, as a benchmark against which to examine various multilateral and preferential trade policy scenarios that might emerge over the...

AustraliaÂ’s lacklustre economic growth performance in the first four decades following World War II was in part due to an anti-trade, anti-primary sector bias in government assistance policies. This paper provides new annual estimates of the extent of those biases since 1946 and their...

For decades, earnings from farming in many low-income 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 reduce national and global economic...

Four West African nations have demanded the WTOÂ’s Doha Development Agenda include a Cotton Initiative that involves two issues: cutting cotton subsidies and tariffs, and assisting farm productivity growth in Africa. This paper provides estimates of the potential economic impacts of (a)...

A common-agency lobbying model is developed to help understand why North America and the European Union have adopted such different policies towards genetically modified food. Our results show that when firms (in this case farmers) lobby policy makers to influence standards and consumers and...