The Uruguay Round and Welfare in Some Distorted Agricultural Economies / James E. Anderson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Anderson, James E.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w5923.

NBER working paper series no. w5923

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1997.

Summary:

There is widespread concern that the Uruguay Round may reduce the welfare of developing countries through its effect on world agricultural prices. Reduced agricultural price distortions among major supplying nations are predicted to increase basic food prices and decrease some important export prices such as those for coffee and cotton. It appears that raising food prices paid by food importers must be bad for them, while reducing world coffee and cotton prices appears bad for exporters of those products. Appearances may be deceiving, however, since theory shows that a distortion effect operates alongside the standard terms of trade effect. I report here distortion effects which are many times larger" than terms of trade effects in an analysis of the Uruguay Round's impact on 9 agricultural economies. I deploy a simple Computable General Equilibrium model. The 9 developing economies are distorted by domestic agricultural distortions in 15 markets, along with hundreds of 4 digit nonagricultural tariffs and quotas. In 3 of 9 countries, the distortion effect reverses the impact of the terms of trade effect. In 2 other countries the distortion effect raises a trivial terms of trade effect up to around 1% of national income.

Notes:

Print version record

February 1997.