Reforming Agricultural Trade for Developing Countries

Book excerpt: In the ongoing Doha Development Round of World Trade Organization negotiations, developing countries have had much greater leverage, due at least in part to their large and growing share of world trade. But will the increased influence of developing countries translate into a final agreement that is truly more development-friendly? What would be key ingredients in such a final outcome of the negotiations, and what would the developing countries really get out of it. This two volume set seeks to answer these questions. This volume (Volume 2) addresses the question of how a development-friendly outcome to the talks would affect developing countries by quantifying the impact of multilateral trade reform. It presents several different approaches to modeling the effects of the outcome of negotiations, and then investigates why these (and other) modeling efforts produce such divergent results. Volume 1 is issues-oriented. It takes up some key questions in the negotiations, setting the stage with a historical overview of the Doha Development Agenda to help identify issues of most significance to developing countries, and then explores select issues in greater depth. Aimed at policymakers and stakeholders, this two-volume effort puts into the public domain important analytical work that will improve the chance for a pro-development outcomes of the Doha round negotiations.