Agricultural Price Distortions, Inequality, and Poverty : Introduction and Summary

Anderson, Kym ; Cockburn, John ; Martin, Will

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ADVERSE EFFECT;    AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT;    AGRICULTURAL INCOMES;    AGRICULTURAL LAND;    AGRICULTURAL LIBERALIZATION;   

RP-ID  :  55933

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Reforms in recent decades have sharplyreduced the distortions affecting agriculture in developingcountries, particularly by cuts to agricultural export taxesand by some reductions in government assistance toagriculture in high-income countries, but internationaltrade in farm products continues to be far more distortedthan trade in nonfarm goods. This paper summarizes a seriesof empirical studies that focus on the effects of theremaining distortions to world merchandise trade for povertyand inequality, especially in developing countries. Toobtain different insights into the various impacts, twoglobal studies are undertaken using the World Bank'sLinkage model, one multi-country study uses the Global TradeAnalysis Project (GTAP) model, and ten country case studiesare also included, each using a national economy-wide model.The Linkage model results suggest that liberalization willreduce international inequality, largely by boosting farmincomes and raising real wages for unskilled workers indeveloping countries, and will reduce the number of poorpeople worldwide by 3 percent. The analysis based on theGTAP model for a sample of 15 countries, and the tenstand-alone national case studies, all point to largerreductions in poverty, especially if only the non-poor aresubjected to increased income taxation to compensate for theloss of trade tax revenue.