TY  - JOUR
AU  - McMillan, Margaret
AU  - Zwane, Alix Peterson
AU  - Ashraf, Nava
TI  - My Policies or Yours: Does OECD Support for Agriculture Increase Poverty in Developing Countries?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11289
PY  - 2005
Y2  - May 2005
DO  - 10.3386/w11289
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11289
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11289.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Margaret S. McMillan
Tufts University
Department of Economics
114a Braker Hall
Medford, MA 02155
Tel: 617/627-3137
Fax: 617/627-3197
E-Mail: margaret.mcmillan@tufts.edu

Alix Zwane
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
PO Box 23350
Seattle, WA 98102
E-Mail: azwane@gmail.com

Nava Ashraf
Department of Economics
London School of Economics
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)78 1559 1134
E-Mail: n.ashraf1@lse.ac.uk
M1  - published as Margaret S. McMillan, Alix Peterson Zwane, Nava Ashraf. "My Policies or Yours: Does OECD Support for Agriculture Increase Poverty in Developing Countries?," in Ann Harrison, editor, "Globalization and Poverty" University of Chicago Press (2007)

AB  - This paper investigates the impact of rich-country agricultural support on the poor. Using non-parametric analysis we establish that the majority of poor countries are consistently net importers of food products that are heavily supported by OECD governments. Using a cross-country regression framework we measure the overall impact of agricultural support policies in rich countries on poverty and average incomes in poor countries. We find no support in the cross-country analysis for the claim that OECD polices worsen poverty in developing countries. To better understand what might drive these results, we turn to national employment and household consumption and expenditure surveys from Mexico.  There are four important findings from the country case study: (1) the majority of the poorest corn farmers in Mexico report that they never sell any corn, (2) Mexico's own policies (signing NAFTA) have dramatically reduced the Mexican producer price of corn, (3) US corn subsidies have had a limited impact on this price and, (4) domestic policies have largely cushioned Mexican corn farmers from the drop in corn prices. Taken together, the evidence suggests that a reduction in rich-country agricultural support that raises world food prices is likely to hurt the poorest countries but may have little impact at all on the poorest farmers within these countries.
ER  -