Do Price Uncertainties Affect the Use of Policy Flexibilities? The Selection of Sensitive Products in WTO Agricultural Negotiations

Giulia Listorti, Markus Kempen, Jean Girardin and Tim Kranzlein

No 114381, 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland from European Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: In a context in which price uncertainty is likely to increase, expected market trends need to be taken carefully into account while negotiating international trade policy rules. This paper aims at analyzing what is their influence on the use of policy flexibilities in the context of WTO agricultural negotiations. In particular, within the market access pillar, we focus on the selection of sensitive products. Our model, TRIMAG (Tariff Reduction Impact Model for Agriculture), defined at the 8-digit level, optimizes the domestic agricultural value added subject to a maximum number of sensitive tariff lines, accounting for various future international price scenarios. Furthermore, we test the use of alternative options for the implementation of “tariff simplification”. Findings confirm that the future expected development of world and domestic prices plays an important role in the selection of sensitive products, and that tariff simplification doesn’t affect the results, if provisions to ensure the neutrality of the exercise are put in place. Furthermore, TRIMAG can be considered as a tariff aggregation tool that can be linked to agricultural simulation models that operate at a higher level of aggregation.

Keywords: International; Relations/Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/114381/files/Listorti_Giulia_319.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:eaae11:114381

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.114381

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland from European Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().