IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/1748.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Has agricultural trade liberalization improved welfare in the least-developed countries? Yes

Author

Listed:
  • Ingco, Merlinda D.

Abstract

The author evaluates the progress in agricultural liberalization -and the welfare effects for least-developed and net food-importing countries- as a result of agricultural price shocks resulting from the Uruguay Round. She findsthat: (1) The changes in welfare are significantly affected by the structure of trade and distortions in the domestic economy. (2) Although many economies are hurt by increases in world prices, losses in terms of trade are small relative to total GDP. Only in a few countries does the estimated welfare change constitute more than 1 percent of GDP. (3) In several countries, the distortion effects are significantly larger than the terms-of-trade effects. In some cases, the distortion effects work in opposition to the terms-of-trade effects and are large enough to reverse the sign of the net welfare change. In short, removing policy distortions could convert the small loss in terms of trade to potential gains. But many least-developed, net food-importing countries did not use the Round to support domestic efforts at trade reform. As most studies show, most gains from multilateral liberalization come from the countries'own liberalization efforts, so countries that failed to liberalize their trade policy lost the opportunity for gains.

Suggested Citation

  • Ingco, Merlinda D., 1997. "Has agricultural trade liberalization improved welfare in the least-developed countries? Yes," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1748, The World Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:1748
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2000/02/24/000009265_3971110141301/Rendered/PDF/multi_page.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anderson, James E & Neary, J Peter, 1994. "Measuring the Restrictiveness of Trade Policy," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 8(2), pages 151-169, May.
    2. James E. Anderson & J. Peter Neary, 1996. "A New Approach to Evaluating Trade Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(1), pages 107-125.
    3. Antônio Salazar P. Brandão & Will J. Martin, 1993. "Implications of agricultural trade liberalization for the developing countries," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 8(4), pages 313-343, June.
    4. Tyers, Rod & Falvey, Rod, 1989. "Border Price Changes and Domestic Welfare in the Presence of Subsidised Exports," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 41(2), pages 434-451, April.
    5. Ingco, Merlinda D., 1995. "Agricultural trade liberalization in the Uruguay Round : one step forward, one step back?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1500, 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. Hans Binswanger & Ernst Lutz, 2003. "Agricultural trade barriers, trade negotiations and the interests of developing countries," Chapters, in: John Toye (ed.), Trade and Development, chapter 8, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Cosmas S. Mbogela, 2019. "An Empirical study on the determinants of trade openness in the African economies," Advances in Management and Applied Economics, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 9(3), pages 1-2.
    3. Bezuneh, Mesfin & Yiheyis, Zelealem, 2009. "Has Trade Liberalization Improved Food Availability in Developing Countries? An Empirical Analysis," 2009 Conference, August 16-22, 2009, Beijing, China 51136, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    4. Luis San Vicente Portes, 2005. "On the Distributional Effects of Trade Policy: A Macroeconomic Perspective," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 358, Society for Computational Economics.
    5. Francisco J. Castellano-Álvarez & Francisco M. Parejo-Moruno & J. Francisco Rangel-Preciado & Esteban Cruz-Hidalgo, 2021. "Regulation of Agricultural Trade and Its Implications in the Reform of the CAP. The Continental Products Case Study," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-18, July.
    6. Diaz-Bonilla, Eugenio & Reca, Lucio, 2000. "Trade and agroindustrialization in developing countries: trends and policy impacts," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 23(3), pages 219-229, September.
    7. Maryiam Haroon, 2017. "Free Trade: Does Myopic Policy Overlook Long-Term Gains?," Lahore Journal of Economics, Department of Economics, The Lahore School of Economics, vol. 22(2), pages 65-88, July-Dec.
    8. Anderson, Kym, 2000. "Agriculture, Developing Countries, And The WTO Millennium Round," CEPR Discussion Papers 2437, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Francisco Javier Castellano-Álvarez & Rafael Robina Ramírez, 2022. "Relevance of the Uruguay and Doha Rounds in the Evolution of International Agricultural Trade: The Case Study of Latin American Countries and Continental Products," Economies, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-15, December.

    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. Francisco J. Castellano-Álvarez & Francisco M. Parejo-Moruno & J. Francisco Rangel-Preciado & Esteban Cruz-Hidalgo, 2021. "Regulation of Agricultural Trade and Its Implications in the Reform of the CAP. The Continental Products Case Study," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-18, July.
    2. Anderson, James E., 1998. "The Uruguay Round and welfare in some distorted agricultural economies," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 393-410, August.
    3. Lloyd, P. J. & MacLaren, Donald, 2000. "Openness and growth in East Asia after the Asian crisis," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 89-105.
    4. Sami Dakhlia & Akram Temimi, 2006. "An Extension of the Trade Restrictiveness Index to Large Economies," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(4), pages 678-682, September.
    5. Beyza Ural Marchand, 2019. "Inequality and Trade Policy: The Pro‐Poor Bias of Contemporary Trade Restrictions," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 65(S1), pages 123-152, November.
    6. John Christopher Beghin & Anne-Célia Disdier & Stéphan Marette, 2017. "Trade restrictiveness indices in the presence of externalities: An application to non-tariff measures," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: John Christopher Beghin (ed.), Nontariff Measures and International Trade, chapter 5, pages 81-104, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    7. ERBIL Can, 2010. "Trade Taxes Are Better ?!? Short Answer: No," EcoMod2003 330700048, EcoMod.
    8. Hiau LooiKee & Alessandro Nicita & Marcelo Olarreaga, 2009. "Estimating Trade Restrictiveness Indices," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(534), pages 172-199, January.
    9. Zhaohui Niu & Chang Liu & Saileshsingh Gunessee & Chris Milner, 2018. "Non-tariff and overall protection: evidence across countries and over time," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 154(4), pages 675-703, November.
    10. Seker, Murat, 2011. "Trade Policies, Investment Climate,and Exports," MPRA Paper 29905, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Philippa Dee & Kevin Hanslow, 2013. "Multilateral Liberalization of Services Trade," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Services Trade Reform Making Sense of It, chapter 4, pages 69-95, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    12. repec:hal:pseose:hal-00961727 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Anderson, Kym & Martin, Will & van der Mensbrugghe, Dominique, 2013. "Estimating Effects of Price-Distorting Policies Using Alternative Distortions Databases," Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, in: Peter B. Dixon & Dale Jorgenson (ed.), Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 877-931, Elsevier.
    14. David Laborde & Will Martin & Dominique van der Mensbrugghe, 2017. "Measuring the Impacts of Global Trade Reform with Optimal Aggregators of Distortions," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 403-425, May.
    15. Salvatici, Luca & Carter, Colin A. & Sumner, Daniel A., 1997. "The Trade Restrictiveness Index and its Potential Contribution to Agricultural Policy Analysis," 1997 Conference, August 10-16, 1997, Sacramento, California 197065, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    16. Christos Pantzios, 2000. "Trade Restrictiveness in the Presence of 'New' Goods," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 93-101, January.
    17. Maria Cipollina & Luca Salvatici, 2008. "Measuring Protection: Mission Impossible?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(3), pages 577-616, July.
    18. Salvatici, Luca & Carter, Colin A. & Sumner, Daniel A., 1997. "The Trade Restrictiveness Index: The Potential Contribution To Agricultural Policy Analysis," 1997 Annual meeting, July 27-30, Toronto, Canada 21028, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    19. Cletus C. Coughlin, 2010. "Measuring international trade policy: a primer on trade restrictiveness indices," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 92(Sep), pages 381-394.
    20. Antimiani, Alessandro & Fusacchia, Ilaria & Salvatici, Luca, 2016. "Value Added Trade Restrictiveness Indexes. Measuring Protection with Global Value Chains," Conference papers 332745, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    21. Ilaria Fusacchia & Alessandro Antimiani & Luca Salvatici, 2021. "An assessment of import tariff costs for Italian exporting firms," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 38(1), pages 31-56, April.

    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:wbk:wbrwps:1748. 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.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.