IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/ucdavw/11967.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Brazil Transferred Billions To Foreign Coffee Importers: The International Coffee Agreement, Rent Seeking And Export Tax Rebates

Author

Listed:
  • Jarvis, Lovell S.

Abstract

Rent seeking is well known, but empirical evidence of its effects is relatively rare. This paper analyzes the how domestic and international rent seeking caused Brazil to provide coffee export tax rebates that transferred foreign exchange to coffee importers. Although Brazil was the world's largest exporter, it began to pay export tax rebates to selected coffee importers in 1965 and, by 1988, had paid rebates totaling $8 billion. Brazil explained these rebates as a mechanism to price discriminate among importers and expand exports within the context of the export quota imposed by the International Coffee Agreement. We show this explanation was invalid during most of the period. The net price fell for those who received rebates, causing Brazil to effectively transfer approximately $3 billion to foreign importers. The effects of the rebate policy were never recognized in Brazil, hidden largely by the complex nature of government intervention in the coffee sector.

Suggested Citation

  • Jarvis, Lovell S., 2003. "How Brazil Transferred Billions To Foreign Coffee Importers: The International Coffee Agreement, Rent Seeking And Export Tax Rebates," Working Papers 11967, University of California, Davis, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:ucdavw:11967
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.11967
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/11967/files/wp030002.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.11967?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bohman, Mary & Jarvis, Lovell & Barichello, Richard, 1996. "Rent Seeking and International Commodity Agreements: The Case of Coffee," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(2), pages 379-404, January.
    2. Bhagwati, Jagdish N, 1982. "Directly Unproductive, Profit-seeking (DUP) Activities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(5), pages 988-1002, October.
    3. Robert H. Bates, 1998. "Open-Economy Politics: The Political Economy of the World Coffee Trade," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 6067.
    4. Bohman, Mary & Jarvis, Lovell, 1990. "The International Coffee Agreement: Economics of the Nonmember Market," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 17(1), pages 99-118.
    5. 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.
    6. Krishna, Kala & Erzan, Refik & Tan, Ling Hui, 1994. "Rent Sharing in the Multi-fibre Arrangement: Theory and Evidence from U.S. Apparel Imports from Hong Kong," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 2(1), pages 62-73, February.
    7. Bohman, Mary & Jarvis, Lovell, 1999. "The International Coffee Agreement: a Tax on Coffee Producers and Consumers?," Working Papers 190921, University of California, Davis, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    8. Krishna, Kala & Ling Hui Tan, 1992. "Rent-sharing in the multi-fibre arrangement : evidence from U.S. - Hong Kong trade in apparel," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1003, The World Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jarvis, Lovell S., 2005. "The rise and decline of rent-seeking activity in the Brazilian coffee sector: Lessons from the imposition and removal of coffee export quotas," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(11), pages 1881-1903, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jarvis, Lovell S., 2005. "The rise and decline of rent-seeking activity in the Brazilian coffee sector: Lessons from the imposition and removal of coffee export quotas," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(11), pages 1881-1903, November.
    2. Bin, Sheng, 2000. "The Political Economy of Trade Policy in China," Working Papers 10/2000, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Management, Politics & Philosophy.
    3. Douglas Davis & Robert Reilly, 1998. "Do too many cooks always spoil the stew? An experimental analysis of rent-seeking and the role of a strategic buyer," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 95(1), pages 89-115, April.
    4. Edward C. Prescott & Stephen L. Parente, 1999. "Monopoly Rights: A Barrier to Riches," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(5), pages 1216-1233, December.
    5. Yogesh Uppal, 2011. "Does legislative turnover adversely affect state expenditure policy? Evidence from Indian state elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 189-207, April.
    6. Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci & Eric Langlais & Bruno Lovat & Francesco Parisi, 2007. "Crowding-out in productive and redistributive rent-seeking," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 133(1), pages 199-229, October.
    7. Auriol, Emmanuelle & Straub, Stéphane & Flochel, Thomas, 2016. "Public Procurement and Rent-Seeking: The Case of Paraguay," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 395-407.
    8. Federico Bonaglia & Jorge Braga de Macedo & Maurizio Bussolo, 2009. "How Globalisation Improves Governance," Chapters, in: Linda Yueh (ed.), The Law and Economics of Globalisation, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. James Lake & Maia Linask, 2016. "Domestic political competition and pro-cyclical import protection," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 564-591, August.
    10. Sasha C. Breger Bush, 2010. "The World Bank’s approach to increasing the vulnerability of small coffee producers," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 11310, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    11. Liu, Lu & Zhao, Qiuhong & Bi, Yanlin, 2020. "Why rent-seeking behavior may exist in Chinese mining safety production inspection system and how to alleviate it: A tripartite game analysis," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    12. Chakrabarty, Subrata, 2009. "The influence of national culture and institutional voids on family ownership of large firms: A country level empirical study," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 32-45, March.
    13. Coggins, Jay S. & Graham-Tomasi, Theodore & Roe, Terry L., 1988. "Existence of Equilibria in Lobbying Economics," Bulletins 7468, University of Minnesota, Economic Development Center.
    14. Peter Mihalyi & Iván Szelenyi, 2016. "Two different sources of inequalities: profits and rents in advanced market economies," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 1630, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    15. Gylfason, Thorvaldur, 1999. "Exports, Inflation and Growth," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 1031-1057, June.
    16. Randall G. Holcombe, 2019. "Transitional gains and rent extraction," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 127-139, October.
    17. Matthew D. Mitchell, 2019. "Uncontestable favoritism," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 167-190, October.
    18. Sugata Marjit & Biswajit Mandal, 2008. "Corruption and Trade in General Equilibrium," Discussion Papers 08/15, University of Nottingham, GEP.
    19. DeRosa, Dean A., 1997. "Agricultural trade and rural development in the Middle East and North Africa: recent developments and prospects," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1732, The World Bank.
    20. Richard Ball, 1995. "Interest Groups, Influence And Welfare," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 119-146, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    International Relations/Trade;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:ucdavw:11967. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/daucdus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.