The Poverty Impacts of Global Commodity Trade Liberalization

Hertel, Thomas W. ; Keeney, Roman

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ABSOLUTE VALUE;    AGGREGATE POVERTY;    AGRICULTURAL COMMODITY;    AGRICULTURAL LAND;    AGRICULTURAL OUTPUT;   

RP-ID  :  55936

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper examines the poverty impactsof global merchandise trade reform by looking at a widerange of developing countries in Africa, Asia and LatinAmerica. Overall, the authors find that trade reform tendsto reduce poverty primarily through the inclusion ofagricultural components. The majority of developing countrysample experiences small poverty increases fromnon-agricultural reforms. The authors explore the relativepoverty-friendliness of agricultural trade reforms indetail, examining the differential impacts on real after-taxfactor returns of agricultural versus non-agriculturalreforms. This analysis is extended to the distribution ofhouseholds by looking at stratum-specific poverty changes.The author's findings indicate that the more favorableimpacts of agricultural reforms are driven by increasedreturns to peasant farm households' labor as well ashigher returns for unskilled wage labor. Finally, theauthors examine the commodity-specific poverty impacts oftrade reform for this sample of countries. The authors findthat liberalization of food grains and other processed foodsrepresent the largest contributions to poverty reduction.More specifically, it is tariff reform in these commoditymarkets that dominates the poverty increasing impacts ofwealthy country subsidy removal.