Annual Estimates of Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in High-Income Countries

Abstract

This working paper summarizes the annual estimates, for each of the world's main high-income countries, of key distortion indicators defined in Anderson et al. (2008), and provides some summary statistics for the group's estimates. It begins with tables for the countries of Western Europe, followed by Japan, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Shorter versions for subsets of countries are reproduced also as Appendixes in Anderson, Lattimore, Lloyd and MacLaren (2008), Gardner (2008), Honma and Hayami (2008), and Josling (2008). Four tables are provided for each country: (a) the nominal rate of assistance to individual farm products covered in the study and their weighted average, using as weights production valued at undistorted prices; (b) the relative rate of assistance to producers of agricultural (relative to non-agricultural) tradable, again using as weights production valued at undistorted prices, and the component parts of the Relative Rate of Assistance (RRA) calculation; (c) the weights themselves for individual covered farm products and for the residual non-covered group of products, shown as percentages and so they sum to 100 percent; and (d) the trade status of each covered product each year. In the case of the European Union (EU) countries of Western Europe, the trade status is assumed to be that of the EU membership in any given year, since the Nominal Rate of Assistance (NRA) for each product is assumed to be the same for each EU member (with the membership growing progressively from initially 6 to 9 (from 1973), 12 (from 1986), and 15 (from 1995). The average NRAs for all covered products differ across EU member countries though, because of their different weights for each product in their national value of agricultural production.