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Would Freeing Up World Trade Reduce Poverty and Inequality? The Vexed Role of Agricultural Distortions

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  • Anderson, Kym
  • Cockburn, John
  • Martin, William J.

Abstract

Trade policy reforms in recent decades have sharply reduced the distortions that were harming agriculture in developing countries, yet global trade in farm products continues to be far more distorted than trade in nonfarm goods. Those distortions reduce some forms of poverty and inequality but worsen others, so the net effects are unclear without empirical modeling. This paper summarizes a series of new economy-wide global and national empirical studies that focus on the net effects of the remaining distortions to world merchandise trade on poverty and inequality globally and in various developing countries. The global LINKAGE model results suggest that removing those remaining distortions would reduce international inequality, largely by boosting net farm incomes and raising real wages for unskilled workers in developing countries, and would reduce the number of poor people worldwide by 3 percent. The analysis based on the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model for a sample of 15 countries, and ten stand-alone national case studies, all point to larger reductions in poverty, especially if only the non-poor are subjected to increased income taxation to compensate for the loss of trade tax revenue.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society in its series 2010 Conference (54th), February 10-12, 2010, Adelaide, Australia with number 58880.

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Date of creation: 2010
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Handle: RePEc:ags:aare10:58880

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Keywords: Poverty; income inequality; price distortions; farm trade policy; International Development;

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  1. Cranfield, J. A. L. & Preckel, Paul V. & Eales, James S. & Hertel, Thomas W., 2002. "Estimating consumer demands across the development spectrum: maximum likelihood estimates of an implicit direct additivity model," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 289-307, August.
  2. Anderson, Kym & Kurzweil, Marianne & Martin, Will & Sandri, Damiano & Valenzuela, Ernesto, 2008. "Measuring distortions to agricultural incentives, revisited," World Trade Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(04), pages 675-704, October.
  3. Francois Bourguignon & Victoria Levin & David Rosenblatt, 2004. "Declining International Inequality and Economic Divergence: Reviewing the Evidence Through Different Lenses," Economie Internationale, CEPII research center, issue 100, pages 13-26.
  4. Helpman, Elhanan & Itskhoki, Oleg & Redding, Stephen J., 2009. "Inequality and Unemployment in a Global Economy," CEPR Discussion Papers 7353, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  5. Valenzuela, Ernesto & Kym Anderson, 2009. "Alternative Agricultural Price Distortions for CGE Analysis of Developing Countries, 2004 and 1980-84," GTAP Research Memoranda 2925, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University.
  6. Thomas W. Hertel & Maros Ivanic & Paul V. Preckel & John A. L. Cranfield, 2004. "The Earnings Effects of Multilateral Trade Liberalization: Implications for Poverty," World Bank Economic Review, World Bank Group, vol. 18(2), pages 205-236.
  7. Bussolo, Maurizio & De Hoyos, Rafael E. & Medvedev, Denis, 2008. "Is the developing world catching up ? global convergence and national rising dispersion," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4733, The World Bank.
  8. Keijiro Otsuka & Takashi Yamano, 2006. "Introduction to the special issue on the role of nonfarm income in poverty reduction: evidence from Asia and East Africa," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 35(s3), pages 393-397, November.
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Cited by:
  1. Anderson, Kym, 2012. "Agricultural Price Distortions: Trends and Volatility, Past and Prospective," 2012 Conference, August 18-24, 2012, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil 125692, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
  2. Anderson, Kym & Bruckner, Markus, 2012. "Distortions to Agriculture and Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa," 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington 124908, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
  3. Dethier, Jean-Jacques & Effenberger, Alexandra, 2011. "Agriculture and development : a brief review of the literature," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5553, The World Bank.

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