Political Economy of Agricultural Trade Interventions in Africa

Bates, Robert H. ; Block, Steven

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: AGRICULTURAL COMMODITIES;    AGRICULTURAL OUTPUT;    AGRICULTURAL POLICIES;    AGRICULTURAL POLICY;    AGRICULTURAL PRODUCERS;   

RP-ID  :  55960

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 uses new data on agriculturalpolicy interventions to examine the political economy ofagricultural trade policies in Sub-Saharan Africa.Historically, African governments have discriminated againstagricultural producers in general (relative to producers innon-agricultural sectors), and against producers of exportagriculture in particular. While more moderate in recentyears, these patterns of discrimination persist. They do soeven though farmers comprise a political majority. Ratherthan claiming the existence of a single best approach to theanalysis of policy choice, the authors explore the impact ofthree factors: institutions, regional inequality, and taxrevenue-generation. The authors find that agriculturaltaxation increases with the rural population share in theabsence of electoral party competition; yet, the existenceof party competition turns the lobbying disadvantage of therural majority into political advantage. The authors alsofind that privileged cash crop regions are particulartargets for redistributive taxation, unless thecountry's president comes from that region. Inaddition, governments of resource-rich countries, whilecontinuing to tax export producers, reduce their taxation offood consumers.