Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Agricultural Price Distortion and Stabilization: Stylized facts and Hypothesis Tests

Contents:

Author Info

  • Masters, William A.
  • Garcia, Andres F.

Abstract

This paper describes agricultural policy choices and tests some predictions of political economy theories. It begins with three broad stylized facts: governments tend to tax agriculture in poorer countries, and subsidize it in richer ones, tax both imports and exports more than nontradables, and tax more and subsidize less where there is more land per capita. We test a variety of political-economy explanations, finding results consistent with hypothesized effects of rural and urban constituents’ rational ignorance about small per-person effects, governance institutions’ control of rent-seeking by political leaders, governments’ revenue motive for taxation, and the role of time consistency in policy-making. We also find that larger groups obtain more favorable policies, suggesting that positive group size effects outweigh any negative influence from more free-ridership, and that demographically driven entry of new farmers is associated with less favorable farm policies, suggesting the arrival of new farmers erodes policy rents and discourages political activity by incumbents. Another new result is that governments achieve very little price stabilization relative to our benchmark estimates of undistorted prices, and governments in the poorest countries actually destabilize domestic prices.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://purl.umn.edu/50301
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by World Bank in its series Agricultural Distortions Working Paper with number 50301.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: May 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ags:wbadwp:50301

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.worldbank.org
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: Distorted incentives; agricultural and trade policy reforms; national agricultural development; Agricultural price distortions; political economy; Agricultural and Food Policy; International Relations/Trade; F13; F14; Q17; Q18; D72; D78; F11; H23;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Beck, T.H.L. & Clarke, G. & Groff, A. & Keefer , P. & Walsh, P., 2001. "New tools in comparative political economy: The database of political institutions," Open Access publications from Tilburg University urn:nbn:nl:ui:12-3125517, Tilburg University.
  2. Fernandez, Raquel & Rodrik, Dani, 1991. "Resistance to Reform: Status Quo Bias in the Presence of Individual-Specific Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1146-55, December.
  3. Anderson, Kym, 1995. "Lobbying Incentives and the Pattern of Protection in Rich and Poor Countries," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 43(2), pages 401-23, January.
  4. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65, pages 135.
  5. Jonathan Isham & Michael Woolcock & Lant Pritchett & Gwen Busby, 2005. "The Varieties of Resource Experience: Natural Resource Export Structures and the Political Economy of Economic Growth," World Bank Economic Review, World Bank Group, vol. 19(2), pages 141-174.
  6. McMillan, Margaret S. & Masters, William A., 2000. "An African Growth Trap: Production Technology And The Time-Consistency Of Agricultural Taxation, R&D And Investment," Miscellaneous Papers 11839, Agecon Search.
  7. Krueger, Anne O, 1974. "The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(3), pages 291-303, June.
  8. Hillman, Arye L, 1982. "Declining Industries and Political-Support Protectionist Motives," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(5), pages 1180-87, December.
  9. Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, 1979. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk," Levine's Working Paper Archive 7656, David K. Levine.
  10. Timmer, C. Peter, 1989. "Food price policy : The rationale for government intervention," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 17-27, February.
  11. Richard E. Baldwin & Frédéric Robert-Nicoud, 2007. "Entry and Asymmetric Lobbying: Why Governments Pick Losers," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 5(5), pages 1064-1093, 09.
  12. Anderson, Kym & Kurzweil, Marianne & Martin, Will & Sandri, Damiano & Valenzuela, Ernesto, 2008. "Measuring Distortions to Agricultural Incentives, Revisited," CEPR Discussion Papers 6924, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  13. Valenzuela, Ernesto & Wong, Sara & Sandri, Damiano, 2007. "Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Ecuador," Agricultural Distortions Working Paper 48394, World Bank.
  14. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1977. "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 473-91, June.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:wbadwp:50301

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (AgEcon Search).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.