Why Agricultural policies need to be disciplined under the GATT/WTO

Abstract

During more than three centuries of modern economic growth there has been only one significant episode involving a major liberalization of agricultural protectionism, namely the mid-nineteenth century repeal of Britain's Corn Laws. Other than that, the history of industrial and post-industrial development has been overlaid with a history of agricultural protection growth. Poor agrarian economies tend to tax agriculture relative to other tradables sectors, but as nations industrialize their policy regimes tend to gradually change from negatively to positively assisting farmers relative to other producers (and conversely from subsidizing to taxing food consumers). The period since the 1950s has seen substantial growth in agricultural protectionism in the advanced industrial economies and its spread to newly industrializing economies, and those tendencies accelerated in the 1980s (Anderson and Hayami 1986; Anderson 1994, 1995; Lindert 1991). Show more