Resource Center

Advanced Search
Technical Papers
Working Papers
Research Memoranda
GTAP-L Mailing List
GTAP FAQs
CGE Books/Articles
Important References
Submit New Resource

GTAP Resources: Resource Display

GTAP Resource #2185

"Distributional Effects of WTO Agricultural Reforms in Rich and Poor Countries*"
by Hertel, Thomas, Roman Keeney, Maros Ivanic and Alan Winters


Abstract
Rich countries’ agricultural trade policies are the battleground on which the future of the WTO’s troubled Doha Round will be determined. Subject to widespread criticism, they nonetheless appear to be almost immune to serious reform, and one of their most common defenses is that they protect poor farmers. Our findings reject this claim. The analysis conducted here uses detailed data on farm incomes to show that major commodity programs are highly regressive in the USA, and that the only serious losses under trade reform are among large, wealthy, farmers in a few heavily protected subsectors. In contrast, analysis using household data from fifteen developing countries indicates that reforming rich countries’ agricultural trade policies would lift large numbers of developing country farm households out of poverty. In the majority of cases these gains are not outweighed by the poverty-increasing effects of higher food prices among other households. Agricultural reforms that appear feasible, even under an ambitious Doha Round, achieve only a fraction of the benefits for developing countries that full liberalization promises, but protects US large farms from most of the rigors of adjustment. Finally, the analysis conducted here indicates that maximal trade-led poverty reductions occur when developing countries participate more fully in agricultural trade liberalization.


Resource Details (Export Citation) GTAP Keywords
Category: Working Paper
Status: Not published
By/In: GTAP Working Paper No. 33
Date: 2006
Version:
Created: Muthuraman, K. (9/20/2006)
Updated: Muthuraman, K. (11/17/2006)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21642/GTAP.WP33
Visits: 32,105
No keywords have been specified.


Attachments
If you have trouble accessing any of the attachments below due to disability, please contact the authors listed above.


Public Access
  File format GTAP Resource 2185  (1.3 MB)   Replicated: 0 time(s)
  File format Working Paper No. 33 Annexes  (125.4 KB)   Replicated: 0 time(s)


Restricted Access
No documents have been attached.


Special Instructions


Comments (0 posted)
You must log in before entering comments.

No comments have been posted.