Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Latin America

Abstract

This book provides an overview of the evolution of distortions to agricultural incentives caused by price and trade policies in the World Bank-defined region of Latin America and the Caribbean. Following the introduction and summary, it includes commissioned country studies of one Caribbean, one Central American, and six South American economies. The chapters are followed by two appendixes. The first describes the methodology used to measure the nominal and relative rates of assistance to farmers and the taxes and subsidies involved in food consumption; the second provides country and regional summaries, in tables, of annual estimates of these rates of assistance. This study on Latin America is based on a sample of eight countries, comprising the big four economies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico; Colombia and Ecuador, two of the poorest South American tropical countries; the Dominican Republic, the largest Caribbean economy; and Nicaragua, the poorest country in Central America. Together, in 2000-04, these countries accounted for 78 percent of the region's population, 80 percent of the region's agricultural value added, and 84 percent of the total gross domestic product (GDP) of Latin America.