Trade Barrier Volatility and Agricultural Price Stabilization

Kym Anderson and Signe Nelgen

World Development, 2012, vol. 40, issue 1, 36-48

Abstract: National barriers to agricultural trade are often varied to insulate domestic markets from international price variability, especially following a sudden spike. This paper examines the extent of that behavior by governments using new annual estimates of agricultural price distortions in 75 countries. Responses to price spikes are shown to be equally substantial for agricultural-importing and agricultural-exporting countries, thereby weakening the domestic price-stabilizing effect of their interventions. Bringing discipline to export restrictions through new World Trade Organization rules could help alleviate the extent to which government responses to exogenous upward price spikes exacerbate those shocks.

Keywords: commodity price stabilization; price transmission; domestic market insulation; distorted incentives; developing and high-income countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (93)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X11001483
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Trade Barrier Volatility and Agricultural Price Stabilization (2010)
Working Paper: Trade Barrier Volatility and Agricultural Price Stabilization (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:40:y:2012:i:1:p:36-48

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.05.018

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().