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Two tariff aggregation extensions to global trade models are proposed, taking advantage of international trade data at the tariff line level. The proposed methods correct for typical biases in tariff aggregation. Firstly, they take into account the substitution effects in an optimal consumption bundle at the tariff line level. Secondly, they also deal with the “water” in tariffs, i.e. the imperfect transmission of tariff cuts to domestic prices. Finally, they model Tariff Rate Quotas explicitly. The aggregators are tested for Swiss tariff dismantling scenarios towards imported EU beef products, after implementing them in a partial equilibrium model of the agricultural sector.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo avaliar os efeitos de cotas tarifárias adicionais para as exportações brasileiras de produtos agrícolas, com base na proposta européia de maio de 2004 no âmbito das negociações para um acordo de livre-comércio Mercosul- União Européia. A análise teórica do funcionamento dos três instrumentos da cota tarifária (seu volume e as tarifas intra e extracota) revela que, dependendo da demanda, apenas um deles efetivamente restringe as importações. Assim, a oferta de cotas adicionais não implica necessariamente um aumento equivalente na quantidade exportada. Na estimativa de ganho de receita deve ser considerada também a variação na renda da cota. Além disso, a administração da cota terá um papel crucial na alocação dessa renda. Caso seja o Mercosul a fazê-la, as estimativas indicam um aumento de US$ 728 milhões na receita de divisas, bastante próximo do valor da cota total oferecida a preços correntes, sendo US$ 252 milhões resultantes da apropriação das rendas das cotas e US$ 476 milhões do incremento nas exportações. Se o controle das cotas for realizado pela União Européia, o ganho do Brasil decorrerá exclusivamente do aumento das exportações, atingindo apenas 63,7% do valor da cota citada.This paper aims to evaluate the effects of additional tariff quotas on some Brazilian agricultural exports. The study focuses on the European offer in the negotiations for a Mercosur-European Union free trade agreement in May 2004. The economic analysis of the tariff quota shows that - given the demand curve - only one of the three components (the volume and the intra and extra tariffs rates) will effectively pose a restriction to the imports. So, the concession of an additional quota does not necessarily imply an equivalent increase in exports. In the estimation of the gains, one must consider the change in the quota rent. Besides the administration of the quota systems will play crucial role on the allocation of the quota rent. If Mercosur gets in charge, the estimates indicate an addition of US$ 728 million in exports, of which US$ 525 million result from the appropriation of the quota rents and US$ 476 million from exports. The sum of both is indeed close to the value of the additional quotas at current prices. If the administration goes to the EU, the gains will derive exclusively from the expansion in exports, which corresponds to 63.7% to the value of the quota.

The main message of this report is that if Kazakhstan wants to take advantage of global integration and diversification opportunities, the government needs to improve its trade policy framework, its management, and its regulations. It is also finalizing accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) while its trade strategy includes a number of free trade agreements to be negotiated. It is an active member of the Central Asia Region Economic Cooperation (CAREC). This report is composed of three policy notes that discuss how to improve the trade policy framework, management, and regulations: note one is on the trade policy framework and recommends joining the WTO on a tariff schedule that is more liberal than Russia’s; note two postulates that to benefit more fully from the WTO membership and future regional or bilateral agreements, the institutional framework for trade policy management will need a clearer strategic vision, better coordination within the government and with private sector, and enhanced human capacity; and note three suggests that for the private sector to benefit from global integration and diversification, the government should ease the burden of regulations that affect trade (non-tariff measures (NTMs)).

Although average Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) tariffs on imports from the least developed countries are very low; tariffs above 15 percent have a disproportional effect on their exports. Products subject to tariff peaks tend to be heavily concentrated in agriculture and food products and labor intensive sectors, such as apparel and footwear. Although the least developed countries benefit from preferential access, preferences tend to be smallest for tariff peak products. A major exception is the European Union, so that the recent European initiative to grant full duty free and quota free access for the least developed countries will result in only a small increase in their exports of tariff peak items. However, as preferences are less significant in other major OECD countries, a more general emulation of the European Union initiative would increase the least developed countries total exports of peak products by US dollar 2.5 billion. Although almost half of this increase is at the expense of other developing country exports, this represents less than 0.05 percent of their total exports. This trade diversion can be avoided by reducing tariff peaks to a uniform 5 percent applied on a nondiscriminatory basis. However, such a reform would imply no gains for the least developed countries, suggesting that the globally welfare superior policy of nondiscriminatory elimination of tariff peaks should be complemented by greater direct assistance to poor countries.

There is increasing evidence suggesting that climate change will negatively impact agricultural production in South Asia. Decreased domestic production may make South Asian countries more dependent on imports. The extent to which South Asia will need to increase its imports as a result of climate change will presumably depend on the degree to which the latter will affect domestic output. The effects of climate change on agriculture may well differ substantially for individual South Asian countries and indeed for regions within a given country which can be approximated by food production units. This calls for an analysis of climate change effects on trade flows under alternative trade policy regimes both for agriculture and non-agricultural sectors. The specific objectives of the paper include the following: analyze the extent to which agricultural production in South Asia and elsewhere in the world may be affected by different scenarios regarding climate change; analyze the extent to which changes in domestic production in South Asia resulting from climate change will lead to increased demand for imports by South Asian countries; analyze the effects of increased import demand in South Asia and changing exportable surpluses elsewhere on world market prices of major agricultural commodities consumed in South Asia; to the extent that South Asian governments allow transmission of changes in world market prices to domestic prices, analyze the potential welfare effects of changes in the latter; analyze if, and to what extent, worldwide trade liberalization and implementation of South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) will dampen the effects of climate change on domestic agricultural prices in South Asia. In this context, the report is organized as follows: chapter one gives introduction. Chapter two describes the methodology used - with particular attention to how different models and modeling techniques are linked to produce an as accurate as possible assessment based on state-of-the-art knowledge. Chapter three provides an up-to-date analysis of trade flows and policies, and production patterns for key food products in South Asia to explain the context in which climate change is taking place. Chapter four describes the climate change scenarios and illustrates their consequences for crop yields at a global level and for South Asia - and in particular shows the vulnerability of the region to these changes. Baseline design, simulations, and results are discussed in chapter five. The final chapter six provides a short summary, discusses the limitations of the analysis, and derives suggestions and guidelines for future research.

The erosion of preferences due to multilateral tariff reductions is a long-standing concern for many developing countries. This paper focuses on the erosion of the preferences granted by the EU in the rice industry. Since 2004 there has been a sharp decrease in border protection for the EU rice industry. Because the EU grants trade preferences to a considerable number of rice exporting developing countries, the reform implied preference erosion as well. By addressing the impact of preference erosion on developing countries rice exports to the EU, this paper contributes two original insights to the literature: first, by proposing a new empirical approach to compute the preference margin when tariff rate quotas are in force which is based on the assumption of the existence of fixed costs and economies of scale in international trade; second, by estimating the trade elasticities of preferences by means of a dynamic panel gravity equation to deal with the issues of endogeneity of preferences and persistency in bilateral trade flows. The results show that the way preference margins are calculated matters significantly when assessing the existence and extent of their erosion and the values of trade elasticities. Finally, the estimations highlight the fact that the impact of preferences is still very strong for some of the countries concerned.

The 2003 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy in the rice sector has implied a drastic change of the level and instruments of the border protection. Because the European Union (EU) grants trade preferences to a considerable number of developing countries, the reform of the domestic policy also entailed erosion of preferences. This chapter addresses the impact of preference erosion on the rice exports of the countries which benefit from preferences by the EU, with the aim of contributing to the literature from two points of view: first, by proposing a new empirical approach to compute the preferential margin when tariff rate quotas are in force; second, by estimating the trade elasticities of preferences by means of a panel gravity equation to deal with the issue of endogeneity of the preferential margins. The results show that the way in which preferential margins are calculated matters significantly when assessing the existence and extent of preference erosion and estimating the values of the trade elasticities. Finally, our estimations highlight the fact that preferences still have a market trade impact for almost all countries involved.

Since 2004 there has been a sharp decrease in border protection for the EU rice industry. Because the EU grants trade preferences to a considerable number of rice exporting developing countries, the reform implied preference erosion as well. By addressing the impact of preference erosion on developing countries rice exports to the EU, this paper contributes two original insights to the literature: first, by proposing a new empirical approach to compute the preference margin when tariff rate quotas are in force which is based on the assumption of the existence of fixed costs and economies of scale in international trade; second, by estimating the trade elasticities of preferences by means of a dynamic panel gravity equation to deal with the issues of endogeneity of preferences and persistency in bilateral trade flows. The results show that the way preference margins are calculated matters significantly when assessing the existence and extent of their erosion and the values of trade elasticities. Finally, the estimations highlight the fact that the impact of preferences is still very strong for some of the countries concerned.

This paper analyzes the economic effects of agricultural price and merchandise trade policies around the world as of 2004 on global markets, net farm incomes, and national and regional economic welfare and poverty, using the global economy wide Linkage model, new estimates of agricultural price distortions for developing countries, and poverty elasticity's approach. It addresses two questions: to what extent are policies as of 2004 still reducing rewards from farming in developing countries and thereby adding to inequality across countries in farm household incomes? Are they depressing value added more in primary agriculture than in the rest of the economy of developing countries, and earnings of unskilled workers more than of owners of other factors of production, thereby potentially contributing to inequality and poverty within developing countries (given that farm incomes are well below non-farm incomes in most developing countries and that agriculture there is intensive in the use of unskilled labor)? Results are presented for the key countries and regions of the world and for the world as a whole. They reveal that, by moving to free markets, income inequality between countries will be reduced at least slightly, all but one-sixth of the gains to developing countries will come from agricultural policy reform, unskilled workers in developing countries the majority of whom work on farms will benefit most from reform, net farm incomes in developing countries will rise by 6 percent compared with 2 percent for non-agricultural value added, and the number of people surviving on less than US$1 a day will drop 3 percent globally.

Earnings from farming in many developing countries have been depressed by a pro-urban bias in own-country policies as well as by governments of richer countries favoring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies, which reduce national and global economic welfare and contribute to global inequality and poverty, have been undergoing reform since the 1980s. Using the linkage model of the global economy and modifications to the pre-release of version 7 of the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) protection database for 2004, this paper seeks to compare the effect of those reforms to date with those that would come from removing remaining agricultural and trade policies. Two sets of results are thus presented: one showing the effects of policy reforms between 1980-84 and 2004, the other showing what the removal of remaining distortions as of 2004 could be. Both sets of results indicate improvements in the real value of agricultural output and exports, the real returns to farm land and unskilled labor, and real net farm incomes in most developing country regions despite the adverse effect on the international terms of trade for some developing countries that are net food importers or are enjoying preferential access to agricultural markets of high-income countries. Landowners in those high-income countries still offering their farmers price supports could readily afford to compensate them from the benefits of removing remaining agricultural protectionism.

At present there are 1425 tariff rate quotas (TRQs) notified by member countries to the World Trade Organization. TRQs were provided for in the Uruguay Round as a trade policy instrument to guarantee minimum market access for politically sensitive agricultural imports, and in some cases to continue managed trade regimes. This article evaluates the developmental relevance of TRQs and discusses how the various methods TRQ administration methods influence market access in Switzerland for agricultural products from developing countries. The findings show that existing TRQ management in Switzerland is complicated and lacks transparency. Further, the manner in which TRQs are administered results in high transaction costs, a situation that fails to liberate trade opportunities from rents and influences trade flows of the partner countries. Proposed reforms are establishment of a more efficient administrative mechanism, modalities to liberalize trade with TRQs through reduction of out-of-quota tariffs, and capacity building in developing countries; such reforms would maximize market access opportunities from a development perspective.

The paper develops a two-stage capacity constrained model, in which the mode of competition is endogenous and the constraint is flexible, to investigate the impact of Tariff Rate Quotas (TRQs) and of different liberalization options in oligopolistic markets. The model predicts that the equilibrium moves from a pure Bertrand outcome to a Cournot outcome as the effectiveness of the capacity constraint increase, that is, as the gap between the cost of the licences plus the in-quota tariff and the out-of-quota tariff increases. The results show that the impacts of the various liberalization options - the expansion of quotas by means of an increase in the number of operators or in the quota allocated to incumbents, the reduction in the in-quota and out-of-quota tariffs and improvements in the TRQ administration system - are rather diverse from those predicted by models assuming perfect competition., Paper removed by author for revision 12/09/08.

This paper aims to evaluate the effects of additional tariff quotas on some Brazilian agricultural exports. The study focuses on the European offer in the negotiations for a Mercosur-European Union free trade agreement in May 2004. The economic analysis of the tariff quota shows that – given the demand curve – only one of the three components (the volume and the intra and extra tariffs rates) will effectively pose a restriction to the imports. So, the concession of an additional quota does not necessarily imply an equivalent increase in exports. In the es-timation of the gains, one must consider the change in the quota rent. Besides the administration of the quota systems will play crucial role on the allocation of the quota rent. If Mercosur gets in charge, the estimates indicate an addition of US$ 728 million in exports, of which US$ 525 million result from the appropriation of the quota rents and US$ 476 million from exports. The sum of both is indeed close to the value of the additional quotas at current prices. If the administration goes to the EU, the gains will derive exclusively from the expansion in exports, which corresponds to 63.7% to the value of the quota.

Tariff rate quotas (TRQs) were introduced and legitimised as a market access instrument in the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA). TRQs combine both restrictions on imports, as well as safeguarding current or preferential agricultural trade flows. When market access is restricted by a high tariff level beyond the quota, exporters that enjoy the low in-quota tariff may be able to gain a share of the quota rent. The paper analyses the implementation of 87 EU agricultural TRQs between 1997 and 2002 to examine their economic significance from the point of view of developing countries. Analysis of the database shows that TRQ trade can generate a high preference margin but that the potential rent is not so high. Moreover, this potential rent is concentrated on bananas and sugar, because TRQs are actually binding for these two commodities. More detailed analysis of these products indicates that only a few exporting countries are likely to enjoy this potential rent: Latin American countries for bananas and ACP countries for sugar. Whether developing country exporters benefit from this potential rent depends on their competitiveness relative to world market prices as well as on the market conditions which determine whether rent is collected by the exporting country or by the importer.

This paper analyses the economics of tariff rate quotas assuming a large importing country and several different suppliers with differing levels of competitiveness. Eleven theoretical situations are distinguished according to the way the quota is allocated to exporters, the level of constraint imposed by the quota and the relative competitiveness of export suppliers. A graphical analysis is developed and the effects of tariff rate quotas on market access and welfare gains for exporters are discussed in the eleven cases.

Tariff rate quotas (TRQs) have been introduced and legitimised as a market access instrument in the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA). TRQs combine both restriction of imports, and safeguard of current or preferential agricultural trade flows. By restricting the market access through high level tariff beyond the quota, one can imagine that exporters enjoying low level tariff would take share of quota rent. Do developing exporting countries benefit from EU TRQs? Do they enjoy quota rents or guaranteed market access? What should be their interest to defend about TRQs at WTO agricultural negotiations? This article aims to present an analysis of the 87 EU's agricultural TRQs implementation from 1997 to 2002, in order to bring to the fore the effects of such an import instrument for exporting countries in competition on the import market. Some theoretical elements of the economy of TRQs are first presented in order to introduce the empirical work. The database built is then used to interpret EU agricultural TRQs implementation during the period 1997-2002, and the global results in terms of potential total rent that one can theoretically expect from TRQs is detailed by products grouping and export country grouping. A first examination of the database shows that while preference margin is potentially high for TRQs as a whole, potential rent is not so high. Moreover, this potential rent seems to be concentrated on only bananas and sugar, because TRQs are actually binding for those two commodities. A focus on those products indicates that only few exporting countries are susceptible to enjoy this potential rent: Latin American for bananas and ACP for sugar. However that does not signify that TRQs may be eliminated without big losses for exporters: they actually procure guaranteed EU's market shares protected from foreign competition.

First versions of this paper were presented at a FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations) seminar (Rome, October 2004), an IATRC (International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium) meeting (Seville, June 2005) and the XIth EAAE (European Association of Agricultural Economists) congress (Copenhagen, September 2005).; On 29 November 2005, the European Union (EU) unilaterally introduced a tariff of €176 per tonne to apply from 1 January 2006 to bananas imported from countries enjoying the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status. The new EU trade policy includes a duty-free annual import quota of 775,000 tonnes for bananas originating from African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states. This regime replaces the very complex and highly contested tariff-rate quota policy in place in the EU between 1993 and 2005. However, the banana international trade war very likely has not come to an end. Several Latin American countries have announced their intention to challenge the new EU trade policy by initiating a new WTO complaint. In this paper, we first propose an analysis of the two WTO arbitration awards that ruled against the initial EU tariff proposals. We show that the arbitrators’ awards are incomplete notably because they do not explain why CIF (Cost, Insurance and Freight) import unit values in the EU-15 from MFN suppliers are much higher than FOB (Free on Board) export unit values in corresponding MFN countries adjusted by all relevant costs that should theoretically be added to transform FOB into CIF prices. One plausible explanation to this apparent paradox is that reported CIF prices include at least part of quota rents generated by the tariff-rate quota policy. On this basis, we analyse the impacts of different MFN tariff levels on EU banana imports under contrasting hypotheses regarding, first whether the price gap between CIF and FOB unit values does include at least part of quota rents, second whether banana exports to the EU from Western African ACP countries were constrained under the previous regime where a specific import quota were reserved to ACP countries. We also analyse the consequences of an “augmented” tariff-only import regime including a MFN tariff and a duty-free import quota for ACP bananas.

Various reasons including cif/fob spread, differing political price protection depending on the net trade situation, and domestic transportation cost contribute to situations in which domestic prices are different in an exporting compared to an importing situation. Net trade models that take these differences into account must somehow deal with the problem of products that are not exported at the export-based price, because it is too low, and are not imported at the import-based price, because it is too high. In such a case, the equilibrium price lies somewhere between the export- and the import-based price. This paper presents the application of the Logistic functional form for depicting price transmission from international to domestic prices in the net trade model ESIM. On the basis of the EU beef market it is shown that the Logit functional form is a flexible tool for the formulation of price transmission in net trade models. A smooth transition can be depicted from an import to an export based price. Also the effects of TRQs and quantity restricted export subsidies can be included. Preliminary results of the application of this approach to the EU beef market show that each, the abolishment of ES as well as the doubling of preferential market access for beef, may result in a price decline on the EU market of 7-9% and the EU would become a net importer of beef under both options. Combined, the price decline may amount 15% and net exports may amount 15% of EU domestic use.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is arguably the first case study of what may be expected from the increasing number of preferential trade agreements involving both developed and developing economies. Ten years after the treaty's inception, it is time to assess how its outcomes compare with initial expectations. The articles in this symposium issue provide insights into the effects of NAFTA on economic geography, trade, wages and migration, and foreign investment from Mexico's perspective. The contributions paint a complex post-NAFTA reality characterized by persistent intra-bloc trade barriers, interregional inequality within Mexico, labor market outcomes that seem closely tied to migration patterns and international trade and investment, and foreign investment flows that appear weakly related to trade agreements.

This article assesses the impact of the world price-depressing effect of agricultural subsidies and border protection in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries on developing economies' exports, imports, and welfare. Developing economy exporters are likely to benefit from reductions in such subsidies and trade barriers, whereas net importers may lose as world prices rise. A simple partial equilibrium model of global trade in commodities that benefit from domestic support or export subsidies is developed to estimate the relevant elasticities. Simulation results suggest that a 50 percent reduction in border protection will have a much larger positive impact on developing economies' exports and welfare than a 50 percent reduction in agricultural subsidies. Although there is significant heterogeneity across developing economies, the results suggest that efforts in the Doha round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations should be directed at substantially reducing border protection.

Diffusion du document : INRA Station d'Economie et Sociologie rurales 65 rue de Saint-Brieuc 35042 Rennes Cedex (FRA); The purpose of this paper is to estimate the value of current TRQ market access to developing countries as a contribution to this debate. The value consists in the new market access which TRQs created (and the export surplus gained on these additional exports) plus the size of quota rents generated which accrue to developingcountries. As there is widespread agreement that little new market access was created by TRQs, which were mainly used to maintain existing trade flows, often originating in preferential agreements, this paper concentrates on estimating the value of rents accruing to developing countries. The results are interesting for at least two reasons.

Cet article analyse le recours aux contingents tarifaires pour renforcer l’acces aux marches des exportations agricoles en provenance des pays en developpement. Prenant l’Union europeenne comme exemple, il examine dans quelle mesure les pays en developpement ont su utiliser cette politique tarifaire pour y accroitre leur part de marche. De nombreux pays ont suggere que, dans le cadre des negociations actuellement menees sur la liberalisation des echanges agricoles, les contingents tarifaires soient augmentes. Quelques pays ont propose une application preferentielle de ces contingents qui seraient reserves a certains ou a l’ensemble des pays en developpement. L’article evalue les consequences juridiques et economiques qui decouleraient d’une augmentation des contingents tarifaires. Il conclut que les reductions tarifaires relevant de la clause de la nation la plus favorisee doivent etre l’objectif prioritaire poursuivi par les pays en developpement dans les negociations sur l’acces au marche.Classification JEL : F13 ; O19 ; Q17.