Welfare- and Trade-Based Indicators of National Distortions to Agricultural Incentives

Lloyd, Peter J. ; Croser, Johanna L. ; Anderson, Kym

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ADVANCED ECONOMIES;    AGGREGATE DEMAND;    AGRICULTURAL COMMODITIES;    AGRICULTURAL COMMODITY;    AGRICULTURAL COMMODITY MARKETS;   

RP-ID  :  56139

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Despite reforms over the pastquarter-century, world agricultural markets remain highlydistorted by government policies. Traditional indicators ofthose price distortions such as the nominal rate ofassistance and consumer tax equivalent provide measures ofthe degree of intervention, but they can be misleading asindicators of the true effects of those policies. By drawingon recent theoretical literature that provides indicators ofthe trade- and welfare-reducing effects of price and tradepolicies, this paper develops more-satisfactory indexes forcapturing distortions to agricultural incentives. It thenexploits the agricultural distortion database recentlycompiled by the World Bank to generate estimates of them forboth developing and high-income countries over the past halfcentury, based on a sample of 75 countries that togetheraccount for all but one-tenth of the world'spopulation, gross domestic product (GDP) and agriculturalproduction. While they are still only partial equilibriummeasures, they provide a much better approximation of thetrue trade and welfare effects of sectoral policies withoutneeding a formal model of global markets or even priceelasticity estimates.