At what speed should Mexican agriculture be incorporated into the North American Free Trade Agreement (FTA)? What policies should characterize the transition? We use Mexican agriculture as a case study to analyse the transition problems that arise in most major economic reforms. In particular, European Community (EC) farmers can expect similar problems if the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is dismantled and/or Eastern Europe gains unrestricted access to the EC's farm product markets. We focus on the implications for policy design of the absence of efficient capital markets, on the welfare costs of reforming only gradually, on incentive problems created by trade adjustment policies and on the redistributive aspects of policy reform in the presence of realistic limits on available intervention instruments. Our key point is that adjustment should focus on increasing the value of the assets owned by the groups affected, and not on direct income transfers or programmes targeting output or other characteristics controlled by the beneficiaries. We target adjustment on what people have, as opposed to what people do.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. 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.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number
624.
Find related papers by JEL classification: F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration Q17 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agriculture in International Trade
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.:
Cited by: (explanations, 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.)