Agricultural Policy Reform in the WTO


Book Description

Agricultural trade barriers and producer subsidies inflict real costs, both on the countries that use these policies and on their trade partners. Trade barriers lower demand for trade partners' products, domestic subsidies can induce an oversupply of agricultural products which depresses world prices, and export subsidies create increased competition for producers in other countries. Eliminating global agricultural policy distortions would result in an annual world welfare gain of $56 billion. High protection for agricultural commodities in the form of tariffs continues to be the major factor restricting world trade. In 2000, World Trade Organisation (WTO) members continued global negotiations on agricultural policy reform. To help policymakers and others realise what is at stake in the global agricultural negotiations, this book quantifies the costs of global agricultural distortions and the potential benefits of their full elimination. It also analyses the effects on US and world agriculture if only partial reform is achieved in liberalising tariffs, tariff-rate quotas (limits on imported goods), domestic support, and export subsidies.







Agricultural Policy Reform and the Rural Economy in OECD Countries


Book Description

The report, comprising a main report and case studies on Canada, France, Greece, Japan, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland, addresses socio-economic developement of rural areas.




Policy and Institutional Reform in Central European Agriculture


Book Description

This work surveys the ongoing changes in Central European agriculture with emphasis on policy and institutional reforms. Six country studies provide information on price and trade policy reform, privatization and land reform, and reform of up-and down-stream sectors, including credit policies. The book includes studies on the restructuring of Bugarian agriculture, the reform process in Hungary, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, and the transformation of the food economy in Poland.




Agricultural Trade Policy Reforms and Trade Liberalisation in the Mediterranean Basin


Book Description

Bilateral and multilateral trade agreements have been gaining attention and relevance in recent years. For the countries around the Mediterranean basin the most important regional trade agreements involved are the Euro-Med Agreements, which influence their trade flows as they aim to promote regional integration. Based on the theory of applied welfare economics, this study analyses empirically the impacts of different policy scenarios on the agricultural sector of Mediterranean countries by using an extended and modified version of the trade policy model AGRISIM. The results show that trade liberalisation, either multilateral or bilateral, would be beneficial for the Mediterranean agricultural markets due to positive welfare effects and should be considered by policy makers.




Applied Trade Policy Modeling In 16 Countries: Insights And Impacts From World Bank Cge Based Projects


Book Description

This book focuses on the World Bank projects, led by the author, based on computable general equilibrium models of international trade policy. The chapters show an unusual combination of policy relevance, advice and impact, with academic rigor and international trade theory insights. The author discusses some of the policy contexts for the requests from developing and transition countries to the World Bank, the key trade theory or policy insights, policy recommendations and conclusions, and the policy impacts.




Trade Policies for Development and Transition


Book Description

The author has virtually incomparable experience in both providing trade policy advice to more than 25 countries on behalf of the World Bank and also publishing quality journal articles in most of those cases. In this volume, he focuses on his work on: (i) trade policies for countries making the transition from planned to market economies; (ii) his trade policy guideline papers for the World Bank on trade policies for poverty alleviation, uniform tariff policy, adjustment costs of trade liberalization, exchange rate overvaluation, globalization and technology transfer and rules of thumb on regional trade policies; (iii) multilateral, dynamic and environmental issues in trade policy using computable general equilibrium models; (iv) trade policy of the United States in the auto and steel industries; and (v) mathematical methods for modeling. The papers show an unusual combination of policy relevance, advice and impact, with rigor and international trade theory insights. The papers in this volume have appeared in many of the economics profession's more prestigious journals, including Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Economic Journal, the Journal of International Economics, International Economic Review, European Economic Review, Canadian Journal of Economics, Economic Inquiry, the Journal of Comparative Economic, Review of International Economics, World Economy, the Southern Economic Journal, the World Bank Economic Review, the Japanese Economic Review and the Latin American Journal of Economics. In this book, the author elaborates on the articles by discussing some of the policy contexts for the requests for the work from developing and transition countries to the World Bank, the key trade theory or policy insights, policy recommendations and conclusions and the policy impacts.







Can Communist Economies Transform Incrementally?


Book Description

How does China's approach to reform -- incrementally removing constraints on market behavior -- square with the opposing "big bang" thesis that partial reform is probably worse than no reform because it leaves economic agents constrained neither by plan nor by markets? Are there rational bases for these widely different approaches to fundamental economic change? If so, what is transferable from China?