Developing countries are now the dominant voting bloc in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Many developing countries, especially the least developed, maintain that the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture did little or nothing to benefit them. While many of these countries have presented proposals in the WTO for revisions to the agreement, most of these countries have limited analytical cap...

Integration into the world economy has accelerated economic growth in many developing countries, providing an essential impetus to poverty reduction (IMF 2001). Continuing growth and integration of world markets, however, has reduced the distinction between domestic and international policies and provoked criticism of the trade-restricting measures of developed countries. The highly protected a...

Why? Because though the US, back in 1948, blocked the formation of an International Trade Organisation (ITO), believing that, at that time, the interests of its corporations would not be served by such a global body, it had changed its mind by the 1990s. Now it wanted an international trade body. Why? Because its global economic dominance was threatened. The flexible GATT (General Agreement on ...

EU enlargement revives the debate around the participation to the EMU. We use a gravity model to see whether informal barriers have changed over a ten-year period covering the creation of the EMU, and whether their impact on European member countries’ agricultural and food trade has been modified. We find that it has led to lower information costs. We observe a diminishing marginal trade impact...

The implications of sunk costs for many key questions in agricultural economics have yet to be explored. This paper uses a dynamic model of investment behavior to explore how sunk costs can shape market outcomes in ways that might not match predictions of standard competitive models. Applying the model to several key issues in agricultural markets and international trade offers new perspectives...

Except during the Korean War and in 1959, US agriculture has recorded a positive trade balance on a fiscal year basis since the second year of World War II. Largely as a result of agricultural productivity growth during the 20th century, US agricultural production consistently exceeds the domestic demand for food, feed, and fiber, resulting in an increasing reliance by US agriculture on foreign...

Due to timely process of WTO negotiations, unwillingness of advanced industrial countries to give concessions to developing economies regarding tariff and non-tariff barriers on agricultural commodity imports, the ongoing initiatives in Northern hemisphere to establish new and wider free trading areas which will divert trade out of the market from Asian countries, and ineffectiveness of deepeni...

Seaborne shipping is the dominant mode of transport in international trade agricultural products, and an increasing part seaborne carried containers. Furthermore, majority world containers are moved through liner services, that is, regular services provided by global companies which comprise a dense network connecting ports countries around world. Using theoretically consistent gravity equation...