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For decades, agricultural price and trade policies in Sub-Saharan Africa have hampered farmers' contributions to economic growth and poverty reduction. Although there has been much policy reform over the past two decades, the injections of agricultural development funding, together with ongoing regional and global trade negotiations, have brought distortionary policies under the spotlight once again. A key question asked of those policies is: How much are they still reducing national economic welfare and trade? Economy-wide models are able to address that question, but they are not available for many poor countries. Even where they are, typically they apply to just one particular previous year and so are unable to provide trends in effects over time. This paper provides a partial-equilibrium alternative to economy-wide modeling, by drawing on a modification of so-called trade restrictiveness indexes to provide theoretically precise indicators of the trade and welfare effects of agricultural policy distortions to producer and consumer prices over the past half-century. The authors generate time series of country level indexes, as well as Africa-wide aggregates. They also provide annual commodity market indexes for the region, and a sense of the relative importance of the key policy instruments used.

Agriculture --- Benchmark --- Competitive markets --- Consumers --- Development assistance --- Economic Theory & Research --- Emerging Markets --- Equilibrium --- Exchange rates --- Exports --- Free Trade --- GDP --- Gross value --- Index numbers --- International Economics and Trade --- International trade --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Markets and Market Access --- National income --- Price elasticity --- Private Sector Development --- Taxation --- Trade negotiations --- Trade policies --- Trade Policy --- Transition economies --- Welfare economics

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The author examines the impact of historical global downturns on trade flows. The results provide insight into why trade has dropped so dramatically in the current crisis, what is likely to happen in the coming years, how global imbalances are affected, and which regions and industries suffer most heavily. The author finds that the elasticity of global trade volumes to real world GDP has increased gradually from around 2 in the 1960s to above 3 now. The author also finds that trade is more responsive to GDP during global downturns than in tranquil times. The results suggest that the overall drop in real trade this year is likely to exceed 15 percent. There is significant variation across industries, with food and beverages the least affected and crude materials and fuels the most affected. On the positive side, trade tends to rebound very rapidly when the outlook brightens. The author also finds evidence that global downturns often lead to persistent improvements in the ratio of the trade balance to GDP in borrower countries.

Base year --- Currencies and Exchange Rates --- Debt --- Economic Theory and Research --- Elasticity --- Emerging Markets --- Exports --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial crises --- Financial crisis --- Forecasts --- Free Trade --- GDP --- Gross value --- Growth rate --- Income --- International Economics & Trade --- International trade --- Inventories --- Law and Development --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Middle income countries --- Private Sector Development --- Public Sector Development --- Real GDP --- Real income --- Tax revenues --- Trade balance --- Trade Law --- Trade Policy --- Trough --- Value added