Publication: Why Isn't the Doha Development Agenda More Poverty Friendly?
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Published
2009
ISSN
13636669
Date
2012-03-30
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Critics of the Doha Development Agenda rightly point to the lack of aggressive reform in wealthy countries for its role in dampening developing country gains. The authors find that the absence of tariff cuts on staple food products in developing countries also critically limits poverty reduction in those countries. Based on their analysis of the impacts of multilateral trade policy reforms in a sample of 15 developing countries, they find there is some evidence of poverty increases amongst the poor who work in agriculture when they lose protection for their earnings. However, these effects are minimized when agricultural tariffs are cut in all developing countries, and when the impact of lower food prices on low income consumers is taken into account in their 15 country sample.
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Publication Distributional Effects of WTO Agricultural Reforms in Rich and Poor Countries(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-11)Rich countries' agricultural trade policies are the battleground on which the future of the WTO's troubled Doha Round will be determined. Subject to widespread criticism, they nonetheless appear to be almost immune to serious reform, and one of their most common defenses is that they protect poor farmers. The authors' findings reject this claim. The analysis uses detailed data on farm incomes to show that major commodity programs are highly regressive in the United States, and that the only serious losses under trade reform are among large, wealthy farmers in a few heavily protected subsectors. In contrast, analysis using household data from 15 developing countries indicates that reforming rich countries' agricultural trade policies would lift large numbers of developing country farm households out of poverty. In the majority of cases these gains are not outweighed by the poverty-increasing effects of higher food prices among other households. Agricultural reforms that appear feasible, even under an ambitious Doha Round, achieve only a fraction of the benefits for developing countries that full liberalization promises, but protect U.S. large farms from most of the rigors of adjustment. Finally, the analysis indicates that maximal trade-led poverty reductions occur when developing countries participate more fully in agricultural trade liberalization.Publication Poverty and the WTO : Impacts of the Doha Development Agenda(Washington, DC: World Bank and Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)This study reports on the findings from a major international research project investigating the poverty impacts of a potential Doha Development Agenda (DDA). It combines in a novel way the results from several strands of research. First, it draws on an intensive analysis of the DDA Framework Agreement, with particularly close attention paid to potential reforms in agriculture. The scenarios are built up using newly available tariff line data, and their implications for world markets are established using a global modeling framework. These world trade impacts form the basis for 12 country case studies of the national poverty impacts of these DDA scenarios. The focus countries are Bangladesh, Brazil (2 studies), Cameroon, China (2 studies), Indonesia, Mexico, Mozambique, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, and Zambia. Although the diversity of approaches taken in these studies limits the ability to draw broader conclusions, an additional study that provides a 15-country cross-section analysis is aimed at this objective. Finally, a global analysis provides estimates for the world as a whole.Publication Implications of Higher Global Food Prices for Poverty in Low-Income Countries(2008)In many poor countries, the recent increases in prices of staple foods have raised the real incomes of those selling food, many of whom are relatively poor, while hurting net food consumers, many of whom are also relatively poor. The impacts on poverty will certainly be very diverse, but the average impact on poverty depends upon the balance between these two effects, and can only be determined by looking at real-world data. Results using household data for 10 observations on nine low-income countries show that the short-run impacts of higher staple food prices on poverty differ considerably by commodity and by country, but that poverty increases are much more frequent, and larger, than poverty reductions. The recent large increases in food prices appear likely to raise overall poverty in low-income countries substantially.Publication Poverty Impacts of a WTO Agreement: Synthesis and Overview(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-10)This paper reports on the findings from a major international research project investigating the poverty impacts of a potential Doha Development Agenda (DDA). It combines in a novel way the results from several strands of research. Intensive analysis of the DDA Framework Agreement pays particularly close attention to potential reforms in agriculture. The scenarios are built up using newly available tariff line data and their implications for world markets are established using a global modeling framework. These world trade impacts, in turn, form the basis for 12 country case studies of the national poverty impacts of these DDA scenarios. The focus countries include Bangladesh, Brazil (two studies), Cameroon, China (two studies), Indonesia, Mexico, Mozambique, the Philippines, Russia, and Zambia. The diversity of approaches taken in these studies allows the paper to reflect local conditions and priorities and illustrates many important facets of the trade and poverty link. It does, however, limit the ability to draw broader conclusions. Thus an additional study provides a 15-country cross-section analysis, and a global analysis provides estimates for the world as a whole.Publication The Earnings Effects of Multilateral Trade Liberalization : Implications for Poverty(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004-05)Most researchers examining poverty and multilateral trade liberalization have had to examine average, or per capita effects, suggesting that if per capita real income rises, poverty will fall. This inference can be misleading. Combining results from a new international cross-section consumption analysis with earnings data from household surveys, this article analyzes the implications of multilateral trade liberalization for poverty in Indonesia. It finds that the aggregate reduction in Indonesia's national poverty headcount following global trade liberalization masks a more complex set of impacts across groups. In the short run the poverty headcount rises slightly for self-employed agricultural households, as agricultural profits fail to keep up with increases in consumer prices. In the long run the poverty headcount falls for all earnings strata, as increased demand for unskilled workers lifts incomes for the formerly self-employed, some of whom move into the wage labor market. A decomposition of the poverty changes in Indonesia associated with different countries' trade policies finds that reform in other countries leads to a reduction in poverty in Indonesia but that liberalization of Indonesia's trade policies leads to an increase. The method used here can be readily extended to any of the other 13 countries in the sample.
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