Should Global Agriculture Be Liberalized?: Theories, Models and Realities

Boussard (formerly of the French National Agricultural Research Institute, France), Francoise Gerard (CIRAD--French Agricultural Research Center for International Development, France), and Marie-Gabrielle Piketty (also of CIRAD) explore the question of whether it would be advisable to liberalize the world's agricultural sector. They first discuss the arguments of those who suggest the econometric models of the international agencies point towards the advisability of liberalization of agriculture and the counter-arguments and historical evidence showing that food consumption is largely independent of the prices of stable foodstuff and that the production of stable foodstuff depends greatly on price volatility. They then argue that the standard econometric models fail to take into account the lack of reliable information communicated to producers and consumers through prices and show how a modified model that does take this into account leads to very different results showing that liberalization has many disadvantages not possessed by traditional agricultural policy instruments. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)