This paper examines the poverty impacts of global merchandise trade reform by looking at a wide range of developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Overall, the authors find that trade reform tends to reduce poverty primarily through the inclusion of agricultural components. The...

Critics of the Doha Development Agenda rightly point to the lack of aggressive reform in wealthy countries for its role in dampening developing country gains. The authors find that the absence of tariff cuts on staple food products in developing countries also critically limits poverty reduction...

As a new round of World Trade Organization negotiations is being launched with greater emphasis on developing country participation, a body of literature is emerging which quantifies how international trade affects the poor in developing countries. In this survey of the literature, the author...