Suchergebnisse

The SSM is a proposal from the G-33 Group in the Doha Round negotiations in which developing countries would be allowed to use contingent tariffs to control import surges of food commodities and/or downward spikes in their border prices. The principal objective is to safeguard the livelihood security of farm households in these countries. A stochastic partial equilibrium model of a typical importing country situation is specified in which there are either imperfectly competitive, domestic intermediaries or a parastatal. Using Monte Carlo simulation, it is found that the objective of the SSM is unlikely to be met.

The Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) is intended to provide contingent protection to poor farmers in developing countries from negative shocks to import prices or from surges in imports. The effects of stochastic import prices and volumes are analysed in a partial equilibrium framework to illustrate the issues involved. The simplicity of the mechanisms for contingent protection illustrated through geometry are contrasted with the modalities that were proposed in July 2008. These are the choice between an import price trigger or an import quantity trigger. The triggers have been incorporated into a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model by Hertel et al. (2010) and stochastic simulations conducted in order to compare their effects on the levels and volatility of key variables. The conclusion is that the quantity trigger is less effective in achieving the principal objective of the SSM.

[Conclusion]: Barriers to international trade in agricultural and food products exist for several reasons, one of which is to ensure food safety. Food safety is a credence characteristic and this attribute causes market failure through imperfect and asymmetric information. One way in which government intervention in importing countries can improve upon the market outcome is to impose trade regulations as a way of providing the missing information. Any such regulations need to be consistent with the SPS Agreement. It is also in the interests of governments in exporting countries to overcome the market failure by putting in place regulations to ensure that their exports of food meet minimum levels of food safety. The issue for them is whether their regulations should be enforced through public or private agencies. Because of the credence characteristic of food safety, it is not possible for private firms credibly to commit to the provision of high-quality food exports in the absence of regulation. In the application of the SPS Agreement to the area of consumer health and food safety, there is no scope for consumers preferences to be taken into account. The consistency of import regulations is based on risk assessment involving only estimates of probabilities. There is no place for consumers preferences about risk or for economic considerations. This omission is perhaps the outcome of the original negotiations based upon pragmatism and the need to get agreement but it is an inherently unsatisfactory aspect of the Agreement. A better approach would be to incorporate consumers preferences and non-additive probabilities into a more comprehensive decision-making framework. The link between food-safety standards, trade barriers and the gains from trade would then be better defined.

AbstractThis article reviews empirical studies of proposals to tax sugary products in Australia. A corrective tax must be designed carefully if it is to increase national welfare. There is an underlying problem in designing such a tax because consumers are heterogeneous. The best choice of goods to be taxed is the group of sugar‐sweetened‐beverages, the best tax base is the sugar content and the best tax form is a progressive specific tax with two or more levels. We recommend initial rates that are equal to those of the UK tax on SSBs.

AbstractState trading enterprises (STEs) are widely used and can be viewed as instruments of trade policy. We analyse two aspects: the first is their potential trade distorting effect; the second is how they modify the case for the 'politically optimal' tariff. We show that the STE can reduce the need for a tariff designed for domestic redistribution. This result introduces some ambiguity about how STEs are interpreted: from a multilateralist perspective, they should be dealt with in the same way as other non‐tariff barriers; from a nationalistic perspective, they can reduce the need for 'politically optimal.'

AbstractWe review issues concerning the use of state trading enterprises (STEs) as a non‐tariff measure in importing countries. We focus on a tariff equivalent measure that captures the main features of markets where STEs are used, and we identify the factors that influence tariff equivalent effect. We supplement this discussion with case studies highlighting the potential to improve the transparency of trade‐distorting enterprises as employed across importing countries. These studies also highlight that, as the role of the STE changes, so too does the size of the tariff equivalent. Increasing the transparency of STEs can aid the treatment of them in trade negotiations.

Abstract In this paper we provide a new 31‐year time series of the level of protection in the Australian manufacturing sector. The index used is an estimate of the partial equilibrium form of the Trade Restrictiveness Index recently developed by the World Bank. This is the theoretically correct welfare based average of levels of nominal protection. The paper outlines the index and its properties. Some comments are made on the insights gained from the new series and on the record of the Labor and coalition governments in making reforms to industry assistance.

Australia's lacklustre economic growth performance in the first four decades following World War II was in part due to an antitrade, antiprimary sector bias in government assistance policies. This paper provides new annual estimates of the extent of those biases since 1946 and their gradual phase-out during the past two decades. In doing so it reveals that the timing of the sectoral assistance cuts was such as sometimes to improve but sometimes to worsen the distortions to incentives faced by farmers. Also, the changes increased the variation of assistance rates within agriculture during the 1950s and 1960s, reducing the welfare contribution of those programmes in that period. While the assistance pattern within agriculture appears not to have been strongly biased against exporters, its reform has coincided with a substantial increase in export orientation of many farm industries. The overall pattern for Australia is contrasted with that revealed by comparable new estimates for other high-income countries.