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Abstract
The impacts of removing distortions to agricultural incentives and barriers to other merchandise trade multilaterally and unilaterally are estimated using the LINKAGE model of the global economy and a modification to the p3 pre-release of Version 7 of the GTAP protection database for 2004 including new estimates of agricultural distortions from a recent World Bank project led by Kym Anderson. Results suggest the real value of agricultural output and exports, the real returns to farm land and unskilled labor, and real net farm incomes would rise in most developing country regions with such a move to free merchandise trade – despite the decline in international terms of trade for some developing countries that are net food importers or are enjoying preferential access to agricultural markets of high-income countries. Using a poverty elasticity approach, the results also suggest poverty in developing countries would be reduced substantially. The Linkage Model’s terms of trade shocks generated from full global reform, reported here, also are being used as exogenous shocks to national micro-simulation models for a dozen county case studies, with the aim of generating more-detailed inequality and poverty analyses across various types of rural and urban households.