This book explores the potential for policy reform as a short-term, low-cost way to sustainably enhance global food security. It argues that reforming policies that distort food prices and trade will
Despite numerous policy reforms since the 1980s, farm product prices remain heavily distorted in both high-income and developing countries. This book seeks to improve our understanding of why societies adopted these policies, and why some but not other countries have undertaken reforms. Drawing on recent developments in political economy theories and in the generation of empirical measures of the extent of price distortions, the present volume provides both analytical narratives of the historical origins of agricultural protectionism in various parts of the world and a set of political econometric analyses aimed at explaining the patterns of distortions that have emerged over the past five decades. These new studies shed much light on the forces affecting incentives and those facing farmers in the course of national and global economic and political development. They also show how those distortions might change in the future.
The changing patterns of production and trade in fibres, textiles and clothing provide a classic case study of the dynamics of our interdependent world economy. For centuries Asia supplied the textile factories of Europe with natural fibres, including silk from East Asia exports virtually no natural fibres and instead is the world's most important exporter of manufactured textile products and chief importer of fibres. New Silk Roads, first published in 1992, demonstrates that despite the import barriers erected by advanced economies, textiles and clothing production continues to serve as an engine of growth for developing economies seeking to export their way out of poverty. This book is based on selected papers given at a conference which discussed East Asia's role in world fibre, textile and clothing markets. It draws on trade and development theory as well as on historical evidence to trace the development of these changing markets, which are now dominated by the newly industrialize
The changing patterns of production and trade in fibres, textiles and clothing provide a classic case study of the dynamics of our interdependent world economy. For centuries Asia supplied the textile factories of Europe with natural fibres, including silk from East Asia exports virtually no natural fibres and instead is the world's most important exporter of manufactured textile products and chief importer of fibres. New Silk Roads, first published in 1992, demonstrates that despite the import barriers erected by advanced economies, textiles and clothing production continues to serve as an engine of growth for developing economies seeking to export their way out of poverty. This book is based on selected papers given at a conference which discussed East Asia's role in world fibre, textile and clothing markets. It draws on trade and development theory as well as on historical evidence to trace the development of these changing markets, which are now dominated by the newly industrialize
