The analysis deals with the effect of constitutional rules on agricultural policy outcomes in a panel of 74 developing and developed countries, observed in the 1955-2005 period. Testable hypotheses are drawn from recent develop in comparative politics that see political institutions as key...

Using a bilateral trade equation derived from a monopolistic competition model, we investigated market access reciprocity in food trade among the US, Canada, the EU and Japan. We explore country and industry-specific market access asymmetry through the border effect approach, re-challenging the...

This paper documents patterns in international trade costs in processed foods for a large cross-section of developing and developed countries, during the 1976-2000 period. A trade costs index is inferred from a micro-founded gravity equation that incorporates bilateral `iceberg?trade costs. For...

The erosion of preferences due to multilateral tariff reductions is a long-standing concern for many developing countries. This paper focuses on the erosion of the preferences granted by the EU in the rice industry. Since 2004 there has been a sharp decrease in border protection for the EU rice...

We investigate the effect of electoral rules and forms of government on public policy outcomes using a new dataset on agriculture and food policies from 74 countries over the 1960–2005 period. Using both cross-sectional and panel data analyses we find robust evidence that the specific nature...

Since 2004 there has been a sharp decrease in border protection for the EU rice industry. Because the EU grants trade preferences to a considerable number of rice exporting developing countries, the reform implied preference erosion as well. By addressing the impact of preference erosion on...

The erosion of preferences due to multilateral tariff reductions is a long-standing concern for many developing countries. This paper focuses on the erosion of the preferences granted by the EU in the rice industry. Since 2004 there has been a sharp decrease in border protection for the EU rice...

In this paper we study the trade creation effects of the EU preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in the agriculture and food sectors for a large sample of developing countries in the period 1990-2006. Main results show that the EU PTAs positively affect agricultural extensive margins, especially...

This paper analyzes the extent to which the reduction of import tariffs ‒ as a measure of import competition ‒ affects the quality upgrading of the food products exported to the EU. This relationship is studied within a ‘distance to the frontier’ model (Aghion et al., 2005) who predicts...