Models of trading economies have become very large in dimensions and complex in structure. This paper seeks conditions under which it is possible to aggregate the production and consumption of groups of commodities in "industries": commodity groups sharing some common characteristics and...

This paper examines issues which have arisen from the growth of non-tariff measures (NTM)s as the preferred instrument of government intervention in commodities markets, especially for agricultural commodities. In order to understand the effects of NTMs and to compare them with tariffs, the...

"For decades the world's agricultural markets have been highly distorted by national government policies, but very differently for different commodities. Hence a weighted average across countries of nominal rates of assistance or consumer tax equivalents for a product can be misleading as an...

"Despite recent reforms, world agricultural markets remain highly distorted by government policies. Traditional indicators of those price distortions can be poor guides to the policies' economic effects. Recent theoretical literature provides indicators of trade and welfare-reducing effects of...

Australia's lackluster economic growth performance in the first four decades following World War II was in part due to an anti-trade, anti-primary sector bias in government assistance policies. This paper provides new annual estimates of the extent of those biases since 1946 and their gradual...