Political Economy of Agricultural Trade Interventions in Africa
This paper uses new data on agricultural policy interventions to examine the political economy of agricultural trade policies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Historically, African governments have discriminated against agricultural producers in general (rel...
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/929221468000913424/Political-economy-of-agricultural-trade-interventions-in-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28166 |
| Summary: | This paper uses new data on agricultural
policy interventions to examine the political economy of
agricultural trade policies in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Historically, African governments have discriminated against
agricultural producers in general (relative to producers in
non-agricultural sectors), and against producers of export
agriculture in particular. While more moderate in recent
years, these patterns of discrimination persist. They do so
even though farmers comprise a political majority. Rather
than claiming the existence of a single best approach to the
analysis of policy choice, the authors explore the impact of
three factors: institutions, regional inequality, and tax
revenue-generation. The authors find that agricultural
taxation increases with the rural population share in the
absence of electoral party competition; yet, the existence
of party competition turns the lobbying disadvantage of the
rural majority into political advantage. The authors also
find that privileged cash crop regions are particular
targets for redistributive taxation, unless the
country's president comes from that region. In
addition, governments of resource-rich countries, while
continuing to tax export producers, reduce their taxation of
food consumers. |
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