Trade and Food Security Conceptualizing the Linkages

Traditionally, food security is defined in terms of either food self-sufficiency or food self-reliance. The former requires production of various food items in the quantities consumed domestically while the latter requires domestic availability. Based on this distinction, self-sufficiency rules out imports as a source of supply while self-reliance admits them. In modern times, given much larger worldwide capacity to produce food than consume it, few restrictions on the exports of food items in countries with the excess capacity, and the availability of the means of transportation that allow their rapid movement internationally, self-sufficiency makes little economic sense. Instead, what countries need is sufficient capacity to generate foreign exchange by specializing in goods of their comparative advantage and import the excess of quantities consumed over those produced. Therefore, accepting food self-reliance as the means to achieve food security, we may ask how the liberalization of trade in agriculture including food will impact developing countries. In attempting to answer this question, we must distinguish between importers and exporters of the products as also between liberalization in the developed and developing countries. If the objective is to study the impact on the poor, much finer analysis is required since we must decompose the effects at the national level into effects on the poor and non-poor. This is clearly a complex exercise even conceptually so that our goals should be modest. Specifically, it may be wiser to focus on the impact of liberalization on broad groups within the nation rather than go all the way down to the household level as ambitiously suggested by McCulloch et al. (2001).

Miracles and Debacles: In Defense of Trade Openness

The paper argues that without trade openness, there is no sustained growth and that trade is rarely responsible for stagnation or decline in incomes over a long period.

TRIPS and the WTO An Uneasy Marriage

subliminal extant Smith economagic gmm

Alternative Approaches to Measuring the Cost of Protection

Economists measure the economy-wide cost of protection in terms of static efficiency, growth rates and firm- or industry-level productivity. The earlier literature was devoted almost exclusively to the measurement of static welfare effects. But the recent proliferation of cross-country regressions has led some economists to focus on the effects of protection on growth rates. Equally, the increased interest in firm- and industry-level regressions has given rise to studies aimed at measuring the effect of protection on firm or industry productivity. A final, albeit less formal, strand of the literature focuses on in- depth case studies of specific countries or sectors. The purpose of this paper is to offer a unified treatment of the literature on the cost of protection with special attention paid to the measurement of these effects.subliminal extant Smith economagic gmm

Preferential Trading Arrangements, Trade, and Growth

The natural starting point in the study of the relationship among PTAs, trade, and growth is the link between growth and trade. If this relationship itself is weak, it is unlikely that we can establish a strong link between PTAs and growth since such link must work principally through trade. Until recently, trade economists had thought that their systematic research during the 1970s and 1980s had conclusively established the positive relationship between trade and growth. But the criticisms of the evidence by free-trade critics such as Joseph Stiglitz and Dani Rodrik and continued attack on the wisdom of trade liberalization by others including influential NGOs have made it essential to restate and defend this link explicitly. Once this is done, we can turn to an assessment of whether PTAs, which form a specific form of trade liberalization, promote trade in ways that is conducive to growth. Or, is there something peculiar about this instrument that renders the beneficial effects of trade liberalization ineffective?

How should tariffs be structured?

In the course of trade-policy reforms, countries must confront at least two important questions with respect to tariffs. First, what is the optimal structure of tariffs? In particular, is it optimal to tax all imports at a uniform rate? Second, should intermediate inputs be subject to import duties and if so is there a role for duty drawbacks on exports? This paper seeks to answer these important questions based on intuitive arguments, supported by literature and simple diagrams. The author argues that the introduction of tariffs on intermediate inputs complemented by duty drawbacks is welfare-improving. He further argues that if the objective is to protect the import-competing sector, uniform tariffs will minimize the distortion in production but not in consumption. If the objective is revenue, uniform tariffs will in general fail to minimize distortion in either production or consumption. The existence of smuggling, imperfect competition, and economies of scale weaken the case for uniform tariffs. The principal justification for uniform tariffs is their transparency, administrative simplicity, and relatively low level of unproductive profit-seeking activities. The author concludes that considerations of efficiency conflict with considerations of political economy. Ultimately the issue calls for more systematic empirical study.TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Export Competitiveness,Municipal Financial Management,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research