Книги

In this paper we use a general equilibrium model to examine the effects of international quota transfer when a quota restricts world commodity production whilst the trade in an intermediate good is not regulated. The analysis shows that, when the quota regime is not internationally transferable, intermediate input trade substitutes for final good trade. In these circumstances, the distortions are lower than expected. International quota transfer increases world welfare proportionally to quota rent gap. Welfare distribution is also conditioned by commodity terms of trade and, particularly, by the outcome of the intermediate good price.

The paper shows how analyses assuming perfect competition can yield a distorted estimation of the expected effects of a trade liberalization when market imperfections exist. The analytical framework adopted is very simple and three extreme imperfect market structures are considered. In the first case, the exporting country maximizes its producer and consumer surplus by intervening in the world market. The second market imperfection considered is the existence of a private firm playing the role of “pure middleman” in the world market. Then the case of a producer-owned marketing board which is granted exclusive export authority is addressed. It is shown that under all three scenarios, if perfect competition is assumed when market imperfections exist, the impact of a tariff reduction on prices and volume traded is overestimated. A ranking of the size of such distortions in the three cases analyzed is provided. Finally, it is proved that when a private firm exerts monopoly and monopsony power in the world market, both the importing and the exporting countries may well be better off if, rather than making a move towards trade liberalization, the importing country “compensates” the exporting country by means of a direct transfer.

In the wake of the November 2001 Ministerial Conference in Doha, the positions of most members of the World Trade Organisation diverge, reflecting a large extent of disagreement within the organisation. This paper attempts to organise these positions and thereby inspire a debate on the possibility of collusion in the coming round of trade negotiations with a particular focus on the options of developing countries. Members’ positions on a range of issues identified as important in the coming round are rated and used as inputs in a correlation analysis and two forms of cluster analyses to identify potential alliances between members with reasonably similar positions. The paper identifies nine clusters of countries that are internally similar. Among these clusters, the positions of most developing countries are most similar to the positions of the so-called Cairns group and the US, whereas the European Union and Norway are significantly isolated and positioned far away from the developing countries. The paper concludes that developing countries have opportunities of forming alliances with specific developed countries in order to promote their trade objectives in the coming round of negotiations.

This paper provides a summary measure of the possible new commitments in the area of market access undertaken by the European Union and the United States, using the Trade Restrictiveness Index (TRI) as the tariff aggregator. Indicators such as the TRI, based on welfare theory, integrate economic behavioural assumptions within a balance of trade framework. We take the 2000 bound tariffs as the starting point and attempt to assess how much liberalisation in agriculture could be achieved in the European Union and the United States as a result of the present negotiations. We compute the index for agricultural commodity aggregates assuming a specific (Constant Elasticity of Substitution) functional form for import demand. The present levels of the TRI under the actual commitments of the Uruguay Round are computed and compared with three hypothetical cases: a repetition of the same set of commitments of the Uruguay Round, a uniform 36 percent reduction of each tariff, an harmonization formula based on the “sliding scale” scheme. This makes it possible to infer how reducing tariff dispersion would help improve market access in future trade agreements.

A theory-based graphical analysis of WTO’s trade liberalization policies (opening of close-economy to international trade and cuts in price-supports, import-tariffs and exportsubsidies) suggests that most of such policies would yield net social gains to the society, as a whole. The adverse effects and losses in producer surpluses of some of the policies would be balanced out by greater gains in consumer surpluses and vice versa. Losses in producer surpluses due to cuts in price supports and import tariffs are also expected to be partially subsided by reductions in export subsidies mainly granted by the USA and EU; hence, policies need to be enforced, not in isolation, but in a simultaneous fashion. Trade liberalization would help minimize control of individuals on trade, leave less room for individual policy makers, tax collectors and interest groups to exploit situations in their own interest and lead the economy to be run in accordance with the supply and demand forces based on the last lasting general tendency of human nature. This would help to achieve a sustainable and stable agricultural growth; however, more durable sustained growth would depend as how effectively trade liberalization is pursued and enforced the world over. Opening of closed economy for exportables, and withdrawal of export subsidies by foreign exporters would be proproducers and would directly contribute to poverty alleviation. Opening of economy for importables, withdrawal of price supports and tariff-cuts on imports would yield savings to consumers and would positively contribute towards poverty reduction.

This paper proposes a partial equilibrium displacement model that differentiates wheat according to its end-use and country of origin to investigate the impact of alternative European trade policies on wheat supply and demand in France. Transmission, demand and supply elasticities are estimated for each class and origin of wheat. Simulation results show that rebalancing trade protection across wheat classes encourages domestic supply of high quality wheat and displaces imports from North America.

Using a partial equilibrium model of world agriculture, we investigate the multilateral removal of all border taxes and farm programs and their distortion of world agricultural markets. These distortions have significant terms-of-trade effects. World trade is also significantly impacted by both types of distortions. Trade expansion is substantial for most commodities, especially dairy, meats, and vegetable oils. Net agricultural and food exporters (Brazil, Australia, and Argentina) emerge with expanded exports; whereas net importing countries with limited distortions before liberalization are penalized by higher world markets prices and reduced imports. The US gains significant export shares in livestock products and imports more dairy products. Without protection and domestic subsidies, the EU loses many of its livestock and dairy export markets.

We analyse the evolving pattern of Hungary.s agri-food trade using recently developed empirical procedures based on the classic Balassa index and its symmetric transformation. The extent of trade specialisation exhibits a declining trend; Hungary lost comparative advantage for a number of product groups over the 1990s. The indices of specialisation have also tended to converge. For particular product groups, the picture is mixed: indices are reasonably stable for product groups with comparative disadvantage, but those with weak to strong comparative advantage show significant variation. The results reinforce the finding of a general decrease in specialisation, but do not support the idea of self-reinforcing mechanisms, emphasised strongly in much of the endogenous growth and trade literature.

This paper brings time series techniques to bear on the relationships between the prices of the principal types of wheat traded internationally. In all, the relationships between eleven wheat prices (categorised by wheat quality, harvest date and port of despatch) are scrutinised to uncover the structure of the wheat market implicit in the behaviour its prices reveal. The statistical evidence supports the notion of a highly integrated market that is segmented according to wheat strength . the principal determinant of end-use. Three segments are identified: a market for "strong" (bread-making) wheat, another for "weak" (confectionary products- making) wheat and a third for medium strength wheat suitable for unleavened breads and noodles. Whilst informative, market integration - detected by cointegration among prices . is not altogether surprising, yet the presence of cointegration implies a causal structure, which is of more cogent interest. Among a number of complementary techniques, linkages are uncovered using an innovative concept of irreducible cointegration vectors (Davidson 1998, Barassi et al 2001) which provides new evidence on price linkages. Statistical evidence is robust and not test-dependent. Specifically, we find a dominant price leader in each sub-market. In terms of its pricing, the EU is found to play a passive role in the world market, confirming a widely held view.

Agrifood firms operate in a more global, saturated and competitive market than other manufacturing firms, and they have smaller size. These firms certainly need to define appropriate strategies related to accessing the international market and to investing in innovative activities. This two decisions are related to firms size because as Krugman states international trade is not only explained by differences in technology between countries but also by firms’ desire to extend their sales in foreign markets to take advantage of the economies of scales. Therefore, it seems to exist a simultaneous relation between firm size, exports and innovative activities. The aim of this paper is to analyse agrifood firms’ decisions on these three strategies: export behaviour, innovative activities and firm’s size in comparison to other manufacturing firms using some modification from the simultaneous model defined by Entorf and Pohlmeier. The study is focused on the Spanish manufactured firms taking special attention to the agri-food ones. Data come from a National Survey (“Encuesta de Estrategias Empresariales”) carried out by the “Fundación Empresa Pública”) from 1990. Results indicate that agri-food manufacturing firms decision process related to their size, export share and innovative activities is not a simultaneous process. Moreover, some differences with the rest of manufactured firms have been detected, In particular, agri-food firms have lower export shares, lower size and lower innovation intensity than Spanish firms in other manufacturing sectors. Spanish firms decision process on strategic variables (size, export share and innovation) is characterized by a recursive decision process where firms firstly decide export intensity, secondly, they decide their size or total sales depending on the previous decision and, finally, they decide their innovative intensity depending on the last two.

As regards EU accession of Hungary one of the most important questions is how the adaptation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) will affect the competitiveness of the Hungarian agriculture. Competitive effects of CAP can be revealed in several ways (quantitative, comparative analysis, simulations etc.) but the results may differ significantly. That is why it is interesting to compare the results of different methods.

This paper concentrates on the competitive effects of changing trade policy by comparing the results of comparative analyses (producer prices, export subsidy systems and import protection) and simulations. The results of the simulation confirm the conclusion that the CAP adaptation will favour basically the cereal production. CAP adaptation will intensify the already existing (competitive) differences between the two large sectors of agriculture (plant and animal products). All of the analyses came to the conclusion that the prospects of arable crops are favourable. Less reassuring are the prospects of animal products. There are apparent efficiency problems, and rising feed costs (due to accession) may further weaken the position of this sector. Without basic structural reforms the sustainability of the sector’s competitiveness is questionable.

Intra-industry trade in agri-food products between Hungary and the EU is shown to be low and dominated by vertically rather than horizontally differentiated products, suggesting higher economic adjustment costs. Following recent empirical studies, we then test econometrically for the determinants of this trade using different measures of horizontal and vertical trade, and employing an array of popular explanatory variables. Results suggest that separating the measure of intra-industry trade into vertical and horizontal provides for better estimation and supports the contention that the determinants may differ by type of trade. In the regression analysis, the level of intra-industry trade is found to serve as a better dependent variable than the degree or share of intra-industry trade.

This paper assesses and quantifies the consequences of world trade liberalization in agriculture on trade and food security of Sudan. Sudan, with the agricultural sector as the main sector of economy, is characterized by its small open economy, and is classified as one of the least developed countries. Thus, Sudan becomes more vulnerable to any changes in international agricultural markets. The liberalization of international agricultural trade has a great influence on Sudan's food security and on the whole economy. An extended form of a multi-market model for Sudan is developed and used for the analysis. The model embodies important characteristics of agriculture in Sudan like substitution effects and stages of production.

As agriculture is the main sector of Sudan's economy, the model is extended to explicitly integrate some of the key important macroeconomic linkages, and to establish certain feedback effects between agriculture and the macro-economy. The model simulations reveal that a higher world market price would overall lead to measurable gains in food security and agricultural trade of the country. However, when the effect of a higher cost of production is considered, the positive results are reversed. Furthermore, the results of the model simulations show that the domestic policy environment matters very much with respect to the potential impact of world trade liberalization of agriculture. The paper concludes that Sudan should reorient its national policies towards export promotion in order to benefit from the new emerging trading opportunities in world markets. However, to capture a greater benefit from the new environment in the international markets, Sudan should consider and manage carefully all factors, domestically or internationally - e.g. quality standard, loss of preference, dumping effects - that hinder its economic and trade growth.

The EU dairy sector will be one of the most sensitive sectors to be affected by the outcome of the on-going negotiations for the new WTO round for agriculture. Nevertheless, if the Next WTO Round is going to be along the same lines as the Uruguay Round, the EU may be able to stay within the WTO commitments for export subsidy in the dairy sector without further reforms in the Common Agricultural Policy. Certainly, some minor reforms are needed to relieve the binding commitments for cheese and other milk products. The upcoming reform in the dairy sector under Agenda 2000 starting from year 2005 may help in reforming the dairy sector for the new round. In contrast, a steeper reduction in the export subsidy commitments compared to the Uruguay Round may cause problems for cheese and other milk products because the majority of exports in these products will have to be exported without any export subsidy. After enlargement, in particular with a steeper reduction formula, the EU may face troubles in the categories of butter, skim milk powder, cheese, and other milk products. The reforms under Agenda 2000 may not be sufficient because the difference between the EU internal market price and world market price is still too high for EU dairy products to allow unsubsidised exports to the world market. The EU internal market will have to absorb the dairy products intended for the export market. Consequently, the EU internal market for dairy products will be under pressure for further price reduction, and the EU world market share in dairy products will shrink.

Agricultural protection in industrialized countries and price distortions in developing countries are accused to hamper economic and agricultural development and are partly responsible for poverty and hunger in the Third World. A multi-commodity multi-country comparative static trade model is used to simulate the impact of different policy scenarios in this typical second best world for the case of South Africa.

Special emphasis is given to the disincentive effect of production and to endogenous policy responses in South Africa. In conclusion South Africa could benefit a lot by liberalizing trade and agricultural policies world wide, although it is an importer for most of the considered commodities.