This chapter begins with a brief summaryof the long history of national distortions to agriculturalmarkets. It then outlines the methodology used to generateannual indicators of the extent of government interventionsin markets, details of which are provided in Anderson andappendix A. A description of the economies under study andtheir economic growth and structural changes over recentdecades is then briefly presented as a preface to the mainsection of the chapter, in which the nominal rates ofassistance and consumer tax equivalents (NRA and CTE)estimates are summarized across regions and over the decadessince the 1950s. These estimates are discussed in far moredetail in the regional chapters that follow. A summary isalso provided of an additional set of indicators ofagricultural price distortions presented in chapter eleventhat are based on the trade restrictiveness index firstdeveloped by Anderson and Neary (2005). In chapter twelvethe focus shifts from countries to commodities, and all thevarious distortion indicators are used to provide a sense ofhow distorted are each of the key farm commodity marketsglobally. Then chapter thirteen uses the study's NRAand CTE estimates to provide a new set of results from aglobal economy-wide model that attempts to quantify theimpacts on global markets, net farm incomes and welfare ofthe reforms since the early 1980s and of the policies stillin place as of 2004. The chapter concludes by drawing on thelessons learned to speculate on the prospects for furtherreducing the disarray in world agricultural markets.
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