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Agricultural biotechnologies have the potential to offer higher incomes for farmers in developing countries and lower-priced and better-quality food, feed and fibre. That potential is being heavily compromised, however, because of strict regulatory systems in the European Union and elsewhere governing transgenically modified (GM) crops. This paper examines why the EU has taken the extreme opposite policy position on GM food to equally affluent North America, what has been the impact on developing country welfare of the limited adoption of GM crop varieties so far, and what impact GM adoption by developing countries themselves could have on their economic welfare. ; Thanks are due to Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and the Rockefeller Foundation for funding the January workshop of the KSG's Science, Technology and Globalisation Project, and to the UK's Department for International Development for supporting Anderson's research on this topic at the World Bank.

Agricultural biotechnologies have the potential to offer higher incomes for farmers in developing countries and lower-priced and better-quality food, feed and fibre. That potential is being heavily compromised, however, because of strict regulatory systems in the European Union and elsewhere governing transgenically modified (GM) crops. This paper examines why the EU has taken the extreme opposite policy position on GM food to equally affluent North America, what has been the impact on developing country welfare of the limited adoption of GM crop varieties so far, and what impact GM adoption by developing countries themselves could have on their economic welfare. ; Thanks are due to Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and the Rockefeller Foundation for funding the January workshop of the KSG's Science, Technology and Globalisation Project, and to the UK's Department for International Development for supporting Anderson's research on this topic at the World Bank.

It has taken until the Uruguay Round for agriculture to be brought under the discipline of the GATT rules-based trading system. This paper first examines the extent to which the Round's Agreement on Agriculture provides the necessary discipline on farm policies, what reform implementation progress has been made to date, and what problems remain for the next Round of negotiations. It notes that the new rules for agriculture are far from ideal, and the extent of reform commitment is quite minor for the rest of this decade, but at least a start has been made. An important conclusion for net food-importing developing countries is that they need not fear a GATTinduced increase in the price of their food imports; on the contrary, any food price rise that might occur because of the Round's implementation will be so small as to be indistinguishable amidst the many other economic forces at work in international commodity and foreign exchange markets. ; Thanks are due to the Australian Research Council for financial support.

Recent globalization has been characterized by a decline in the costs of cross-border trade in farm and other products. It has been driven primarily by the information and communication technology revolution and-in the case of farm products-by reductions in governmental distortions to agricultural production, consumption and trade. Both have boosted economic growth and reduced poverty globally, especially in Asia. The first but maybe not the second of these drivers will continue in coming decades. World food prices will depend also on whether (and if so by how much) farm productivity growth continues to outpace demand growth and to what extent diets in emerging economies move towards livestock and horticultural products at the expense of staples. Demand in turn will be driven not only by population and income growth, but also by crude oil prices if they remain at current historically high levels, since that will affect biofuel demand. Climate change mitigation policies and adaptation, water market developments and market access standards particularly for transgenic foods will add to future production, price and trade uncertainties. ; The author is grateful for financial assistance for some of the underlying research from the World Bank and the Australian Research Council.

As part of a comprehensive review of Australia's tax system, the taxes on alcoholic beverages recently came under scrutiny. In its initial response to the review in May 2010, the government chose to not change those taxes, even though the review recommended the wine tax switch from an ad valorem to a volumetric basis and that all beverages be taxed to the same extent per litre of alcohol. This paper introduces a mini-symposium of three other papers aimed at contributing to what will be an on-going public policy debate on the optimal taxation of alcohol for purposes of covering social costs associated with harmful alcohol consumption, influencing consumer behaviour through altering beverage prices levels and relativities, and raising government revenue.

Earnings from farming in many developing countries have been depressed by anti-agricultural biases in own-country price and trade policies, as well as by governments of richer countries favoring local farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies reduce national and global economic welfare, add to global inequality and poverty, and are mostly the result of trade restrictions. Yet until recently they have not been disciplined by the GATT or WTO. New evidence illustrates where the GATT and WTO have failed to prevent rises in agricultural protectionism, including in developing countries. Global economy wide modeling results reveal that substantial trade policy reform has been achieved since the mid-1980s in ways that have helped developing country farmers, but that there remains very considerable scope for further farm policy reform. In the decades ahead, the effects of policies on farmers and others in developing countries depend on whether an ambitious Doha Round agreement is signed and countries continue the recent trends towards free trade. Should Doha fail, agricultural protectionism may well grow in emerging economies, suggesting that the stakes in the Doha Round are much higher than is traditionally believed. ; Financial assistance from World Bank Trust Funds (particularly those provided by the governments of Japan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom), and the Australian Research Council is gratefully acknowledged.