The Cost of Rich (and Poor) Country Protection to Developing Countries

Anderson, Kym; Dimaranan, Betina; François, Joseph; Hertel, Thomas W.; Hoekman, Bernard; Martín, Will

doi:10.2139/ssrn.295498

Cited by 38 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…by Anderson et al 2001) that the agricultural protectionist policies of high-income countries reduce welfare in many developing countries. That World Bank research using the Linkage Model of the global economy, along with similar research using the GTAP Model (Anderson and Valenzuela 2007), also suggests full global liberalization of merchandise trade would raise value added in agriculture in most developing country regions (except South Asia, where job growth for unskilled rural labor would expand more in labor-intensive manufacturing and service sectors).…”

Section: Reducing Distortions To Agricultural Incentives: Progress Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing Distortions To Agricultural Incentives : Progress, Pitfalls, And Prospects

Anderson¹

2006

Policy Research Working Papers

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Section: Reducing Distortions To Agricultural Incentives: Progress Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing Distortions To Agricultural Incentives : Progress, Pitfalls, And Prospects

Anderson¹

2006

Policy Research Working Papers

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“…See, for example, Panagariya (1999). 26 According to GTAP modelling results reported in Anderson et al (2001) using Version 5 of the GTAP database, fully two-thirds of the gains from eliminating all merchandise import barriers globally in 2005, after following the promised tariffication of many nontariff agricultural trade barriers following the UR, but such is not the case. The reason is that governments agreed to allow countries to set their bound tariff at excessively high levels so long as they promised at least existing levels of imports to come in at low tariffs.…”

Section: A Improving the Specification Of Existing And Alternative Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Setting the Trade Policy Agenda: What Roles for Economists?

Anderson

2005

SSRN Journal

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Economists have influenced the trade policy agenda for establishing multilateral trade rules, disciplines and procedures and for negotiating most -favored nation and preferential reductions in trade barriers and subsidies, in addition to affecting the agenda for unilateral policy reform. These roles are considered in turn, before focusing on the economists' contribution though quantifying the extent and effects of existing trade distortions and alternative reform initiatives. Many trade distortions remain, however, so the paper then looks at where trade economists' efforts in agenda-setting need to be focused in the years ahead.Keywords: trade rules, trade policy reform, cost of protection, empirical modelling of effects of trade policies JEL codes: F13, Q17iii NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARYWhat contribution has the economics profession made in setting the agenda for trade policy formation and its reform? Cynics would say little, on the grounds that almost every country still imposes trade barriers even though economists have articulated the virtues of free trade for more than two centuries. A shorter time horizon gives a more positive picture though, with substantial reductions in tariffs o n most manufactured goods by OECD countries following their hikes in the 1930s, and the lowering of trade barriers by many developing countries from the 1980s. This paper examines that post -war period, and then looks at the scope for strengthening the role s of trade economists.Economists since the 1930s have contributed to the trade agenda at the multilateral, regional and national levels. Their constitutional contributions to the multilateral rules and their exceptions include a tolerance for regional and other preferential trading arrangements. Most of the action is at the national level though, including in helping governments decide how to spread their resources between unilateral trade-policy setting and engagement in preferential and multilateral negotiations for better rules and improved access to markets. Underlying all of the trade liberalization efforts has been the economists' quantification of the extent and effects of trade distortions and reform initiatives, both before and after reforms have been implemented. An extensive examination of that contribution sets the scene for looking at where trade economists' efforts should be focused in the years ahead. They include countering the wave of anti-globalization sentiment, improving quantitative anal ysis of the effects of trade reforms, and contributing more to the WTO's dispute settlement procedures. The paper concludes by suggesting more attention needs to be given to the distributional effects of policy reform, so as to better understand the resistance to it and help design measures to reduce those forces. It would help too if individual policy analysts built stronger relationships with policy advisors and their masters.In terms of the more-immediate goal of influencing the Doha Development Agenda, the attention of analysts needs to focus on better modelling of...

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“…Since the early 1990's, there has been a large number of global, general equilibrium, analyses of trade liberalization -some of which include domestic support (these include Francois, et al, 1996;Hertel et al, 1996;Harrison, et al, 1996;Anderson, Erwidodo and Ingco, 1999;Elbehri, et al, 1999;Hertel and Martin, 1999;Anderson, et al, 2001;Rae and Strutt, 2002). Most of these studies are based on the GTAP data base and modeling framework.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

OECD Domestic Support and Developing Countries

Dimaranan¹,

Hertel²,

Keeney³

2004

The WTO, Developing Countries and the Doha Development Agenda

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This paper aims to shed light on the potential interests of developing countries in reforms to domestic support for agriculture in the OECD economies. In order to accomplish this goal, we begin by reviewing the literature on the impacts of domestic support on key variables, including farm income, in the OECD economies themselves.We then proceed to revise the standard GTAP model of global trade, based on recent work at the OECD, in order to better capture these impacts. This work at OECD and analytical results derived by Hertel (1989) suggest the possibility of policy reinstrumentation, whereby farm income is stabilized in the face of cuts to overall support levels by shifting the mix of subsidies away from the more trade-distorting instruments which also tend to be ineffective tools for boosting farm incomes.We conclude that developing countries will be well advised to focus their efforts on improved market access to the OECD economies, while permitting these wealthy economies to continue -indeed even increase -direct support payments. Provided these increased payments are not linked to output or variable inputs, the trade-distorting effects are likely to be small, and they can be a rather effective way of offsetting the potential losses that would otherwise be sustained by OECD farmers. This type of policy reinstrumentation will increase the probability that such reforms will be deemed politically acceptable in the OECD member economies, while simultaneously increasing the likelihood that such reforms will also be beneficial to the developing economies.

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The Cost of Rich (and Poor) Country Protection to Developing Countries

Cited by 38 publications

References 45 publications

Reducing Distortions To Agricultural Incentives : Progress, Pitfalls, And Prospects

Reducing Distortions To Agricultural Incentives : Progress, Pitfalls, And Prospects

Setting the Trade Policy Agenda: What Roles for Economists?

OECD Domestic Support and Developing Countries

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