Agricultural Distortions in Sub-Saharan Africa : Trade and Welfare Indicators, 1961 to 2004

Croser, Johanna ; Anderson, Kym

关键词: AGRICULTURAL COMMODITIES;    AGRICULTURAL INCENTIVES;    AGRICULTURAL MARKETS;    AGRICULTURAL PRICE;    AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-5344
RP-ID  :  WPS5344

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

For decades, agricultural price andtrade policies in Sub-Saharan Africa have hampered farmers contributions to economic growth and poverty reduction.Although there has been much policy reform over the past twodecades, the injections of agricultural development funding,together with ongoing regional and global tradenegotiations, have brought distortionary policies under thespotlight once again. A key question asked of those policiesis: How much are they still reducing national economicwelfare and trade? Economy-wide models are able to addressthat question, but they are not available for many poorcountries. Even where they are, typically they apply to justone particular previous year and so are unable to providetrends in effects over time. This paper provides apartial-equilibrium alternative to economy-wide modeling, bydrawing on a modification of so-called trade restrictivenessindexes to provide theoretically precise indicators of thetrade and welfare effects of agricultural policy distortionsto producer and consumer prices over the past half-century.The authors generate time series of country level indexes,as well as Africa-wide aggregates. They also provide annualcommodity market indexes for the region, and a sense of therelative importance of the key policy instruments used.