Developing‐country agriculture and the new trade agenda

In the mid-1980s, the World Bank organized a large study of the Political Economy of Agricultural Pricing Policy in 18 developing countries. The project’s first paper was published a little over a decade ago, and the synthesis volumes came out about 4 years later. This research effort publicized several facts: policies in developing countries tend to discourage farm production; nonagricultural policies (e.g., manufacturing protectionism, overvalued exchange rates) are particularly important; agricultural exports tend to be discouraged more than import-competing crops; and when policy failures are acknowledged, governments often add further layers of policy complexity rather than dismantle existing measures.