Explaining Agricultural Distortion Patterns : The Roles of Ideology, Inequality, Lobbying and Public Finance

Dutt, Pushan ; Mitra, Devashish

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ABSOLUTE VALUE;    AGRICULTURAL TRADE;    AGRICULTURE;    ASSET DISTRIBUTION;    ASSET INEQUALITY;   

RP-ID  :  55959

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

In this paper, the authors examine thepolitical economy drivers of the variation in agriculturalprotection, both across countries and within countries overtime. The paper starts by listing the key insights providedby both the theoretical and empirical literature on thepolitical economy of trade policy formulation. The authorsthen set out a basic framework that allows us to put forthvarious testable hypotheses on the variation and evolutionof agricultural protection. The authors find that both thepolitical ideology of the government and the degree ofincome inequality are important determinants of agriculturalprotection. Thus, both the political-support-functionapproach as well as the median-voter approach can be used inexplaining the variation in agricultural protection acrosscountries and within countries over time. The results areconsistent with the predictions of a model that assumes thatlabor is specialized and sector-specific in nature. Someaspects of protection also seem to be consistent withpredictions of a lobbying model in that agriculturalprotection is negatively related to agricultural employmentand positively related to agricultural productivity. Publicfinance aspects of protection also seem to be empirically important.