Home  About us  Contact
 

Commodity Policies (commodity + policy)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting75%

Selected Abstracts

Africa, Tropical Commodity Policy and the WTO Doha Round

DEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 1 2007
Peter Gibbon
Despite their critical importance for Africa, and African efforts to the contrary, tropical commodity problems have been touched on only marginally in the WTO Doha Round. This article examines African proposals in the area, their reception in the WTO, and their relation to the current international policy debate. It goes on to provide an explanation, in political economy terms, for their relative success and failure, before concluding by discussing the prospects for finding any international forum where the issues raised by African countries could receive meaningful consideration. [source]

The political economy of public research investment and commodity policies in agriculture: an empirical study

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2000
Johan F.M. Swinnen
Abstract The paper tests a political economy theory of simultaneous government decision-making on income redistribution through commodity policies and on public research investment in agriculture. We use data from 37 countries on agricultural protection and public agricultural research expenditures (PARI). The empirical results are consistent with the political economy hypotheses. The analysis suggest that structural changes in the economy have important effects on the political incentives for governments not only to subsidize or tax farmers, but also to invest in public agricultural research. Furthermore, the analysis supports the hypotheses that the impact of such structural changes on government decision-making on PARI is non-linear and conditional on other factors. Regarding the impact of political institutions, the results suggest that more democracy neither leads to more distortionary transfers (agricultural protection), nor to lower investment in public goods (PARI). ©2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. [source]

Cooperatives and the Commodity Political Agenda: A Political Economy Approach

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 4 2002
Ellen Goddard
Historically, major agricultural cooperatives in Canada have been intimately involved in commodity policy issues. Large cooperatives were created because farmers were upset about the perceived lack of competition in buying farm inputs or selling farm outputs. Often, the resulting cooperative was the organization farmers saw as the logical organization to represent their view of commodity policy or competition policy. As cooperatives grew and diversified, the ability to represent their members coherently across policy issues was hampered. For processing cooperatives in the supply-managed sector, the requirement that the cooperative be the political arm of industry, process product, and provide maximum returns to producer members made for a complicated objective function. This paper focuses on the twin objectives of providing efficient member services and performing political lobbying in a public choice framework. The results are illustrated by the recent history of a supply-managed further-processing cooperative and a diversified grain cooperative. [source]