Guido G. Porto

Trade Reforms, Market Access and Poverty in Argentina

Much of the literature that studies the relationship between trade and poverty in developing countries focuses on the effects of national trade reforms, such as own tariff reductions. In contrast, the World Trade Organization negotiations at the Doha Round were more concerned with the poverty effects on low-income countries, and of foreign reforms, such as the elimination of agricultural subsidies in industrial economies. The author empirically compares the relative poverty impacts of national and foreign trade reforms in Argentina. The author investigates national trade reforms, including tariff cuts on consumption goods and capital goods in Argentina. Foreign trade reforms include the elimination, in industrial countries, of agricultural subsidies and trade barriers on agricultural manufactures and industrial manufactures. These policies enhance the market access of Argentine exports. Overall, a combination of own reforms and enhanced market access would cause poverty to decline by between 1.7 and 4.6 percentage points. This evidence suggests that trade policies can be important poverty-reducing instruments in Argentina.

Farm Productivity and Market Structure. Evidence from Cotton Reforms in Zambia

This paper investigates the impacts of cotton marketing reforms on farm productivity, a key element for poverty alleviation, in rural Zambia. The reforms comprised the elimination of the Zambian cotton marketing board that was in place since 1977. Following liberalization, the sector adopted an outgrower scheme, whereby firms provided extension services to farmers and sold inputs on loans that were repaid at the time of harvest. There are two distinctive phases of the reforms: a failure of the outgrower scheme, and a subsequent period of success of the scheme. Our findings indicate that the reforms led to interesting dynamics in cotton farming. During the phase of failure, farmers were pushed back into subsistence and productivity in cotton declined. With the improvement of the outgrower scheme of later years, farmers devoted larger shares of land to cash crops, and farm productivity significantly increased.

The WTO Doha Round, Cotton Sector Dynamics and Poverty Trends in Zambia

The Zambian cotton sector went through significant reforms during the 1990s. After a long period of parastatal control, a process of liberalization in cotton production and marketing began in 1994. These reforms were expected to benefit agricultural farmers. In Zambia, these are rural, often vulnerable, smallholders. The authors investigate the connection between the dynamics of the cotton sector and the dynamics of poverty and evaluate to what extent cotton can work as a vehicle for poverty alleviation. They find that cotton can indeed act as an effective mechanism for increased household welfare. They also find income gains associated with cotton production, as well as positive impacts on the long-run nutritional status of Zambian children. The impacts, however, are relatively small.

TRENDS IN TARIFF REFORMS AND IN THE STRUCTURE OF WAGES

This paper provides new evidence on the impacts of trade reforms on wages. We first introduce a model of trade that combines a noncompetitive wage-setting mechanism due to unions with a factor abundance hypothesis. The predictions of the model are then econometrically investigated using Argentine data. Instead of achieving identification by comparing industrial wages before and after one episode of trade liberalization, our strategy exploits the recent historical record of policy changes adopted by Argentina: from significant protection in the early 1970s, to the first episode of liberalization during the late 1970s, then back to a slowdown of reforms during the 1980s, and finally to the second episode of liberalization in the 1990s. These swings in trade policy represent broken trends in trade reforms that we can compare with observed trends in wages and wage inequality. We use unusual historical data sets of trends in tariffs, wages, and wage inequality to examine the structure of wages in Argentina and explore how it is affected by tariff reforms. We find that trade liberalization, ceteris paribus, reduces wages; industry tariffs reduce the industry skill premium; and conditional on the structure of tariffs at the industry level, the average tariff in the economy is positively associated with the aggregate skill premium. These findings suggest that the observed trends in wage inequality in Latin America can be reconciled with the Stolper-Samuelson predictions in a model with unions.

Globalisation and Poverty in Latin America: Some Channels and Some Evidence

This paper provides an overview of the main mechanisms through which globalisation can affect poverty and household welfare in Latin America and presents supporting evidence from different case studies in the region. One case study explores the impacts of agricultural trade liberalisation in world markets on poverty in Argentina, with an emphasis on labour income effects via real wages. The second case study examines the impacts of CAFTA on net producers and net consumers among the indigenous population in Guatemala. The analysis explores short-run impacts as well as medium-run impacts as households adjust farm decisions. Finally, a last exercise is set up to study the role of agricultural liberalisation on wages, employment and unemployment when there are frictions in labour markets. These case studies show that the impacts of trade on developing countries are heterogeneous. In Argentina, there are gains from liberalisation of world agriculture and higher food prices. In Guatemala, instead, the indigenous population would benefit from lower food prices. It is clear that household adjustments and complementary factors are fundamental ingredients of any reasonable evaluation of the welfare impacts of trade reforms.

International Market Access and Poverty in Argentina

This paper examines the impact of access to international agro-manufacture markets on poverty in Argentina. Estimates from the literature suggest that expanded market access would cause the international price of Argentine exports of agro-manufactures to increase by between 8.7% and 15.9%. I explore two poverty effects caused by these prices changes: on food expenditure and on wages. Using a household budget survey, I estimate the impact of higher food prices on the Argentine poverty line. Using a labor force survey, I estimate the responses of wages to changes in export prices. My main finding is that market access would cause poverty to decline in Argentina. From a national head count of 29.26%, the poverty rate would decline to between 28.28% and 28.80%. This means that between 161,000 and 343,000 Argentines would be moved out of poverty.

Trends in Tariff Reforms and Trends in the Structure of Wages

This paper provides new evidence on the impacts of trade reforms on wages. We first introduce a model of trade that combines a non-competitive wage setting mechanism due to unions with a factor abundance hypothesis. The predictions of the model are then econometrically investigated using Argentine data. Instead of achieving identification by comparing industrial wages before and after one episode of trade liberalization, our strategy exploits the recent historical record of policy changes adopted by Argentina: from significant protection in the early 1970s, to the first episode of liberalization during the late 1970s, then back to a slowdown of reforms during the 1980s, and finally to the second episode of liberalization in the 1990s. These swings in trade policy represent broken trends in trade reforms that we can compare with observed trends in wages and wage inequality. We use unusual historical data sets of trends in tariffs, wages, and wage inequality to examine the structure of wages in Argentina and to explore how it is affected by tariff reforms. We find that i) trade liberalization, ceteris paribus, reduces wages; ii) industry tariffs reduce the industry skill premium; iii) conditional on the structure of tariffs at the industry level, the average tariff in the economy is positively associated with the aggregate skill premium. These findings suggest that the observed trends in wage inequality in Latin America can be reconciled with the Stolper-Samuelson predictions in a model with unions.

Agro-Manufactured Export Prices, Wages and Unemployment

This paper estimates the impacts of world agricultural trade liberalization on wages, employment and unemployment in Argentina, a country with positive net agricultural exports and high unemployment rates. In the estimation of these wage and unemployment responses, the empirical model allows for individual labor supply responses and for adjustment costs in labor demand. The findings show that a 10 percent increase in the price of agricultural exports would cause an increase in the Argentine employment probability of 1.36 percentage points, matched by a decline in the unemployment probability of 0.75 percentage points and an increase in labor market participation of 0.61 percentage points. Further, the unemployment rate would decline by 1.23 percentage points (by almost 10 percent). Expected wages would increase by 10.3 percent, an effect that is mostly driven by higher employment probabilities. This indicates that the bulk of the impacts of trade reforms originates in household responses in the presence of adjustment costs, and that failure to account for them may lead to significant biases in the welfare evaluation of trade policy.

Trends in tariff reforms and trends in wage inequality

The authors provide new evidence on the impacts of trade reforms on wages and wage inequality in developing countries. While most of the current literature on the topic achieves identification by comparing outcomes before and after one episode of trade liberalization across industries, they propose a stronger identifying strategy. The authors explore the recent historical record of policy changes adopted by Argentina: from significant protection in the early 1970s, to the first episode of liberalization during the late 1970s, back to a slowdown of reforms during the 1980s, to the second episode of liberalization in the 1990s. These swings in trade policy comprise broken trends in trade reforms that they can compare with observed trends in wages and wage inequality. After setting up unusual historical data sets of trends in tariffs, trends in wages, and trends in wage inequality, the evidence supports two well-known hypotheses: trade liberalization, other things being equal, (1) has reduced wages, and (2) has increased wage inequality.

Adjusting to Trade-Policy Changes in Export Markets: Evidence from U.S. Antidumping Duties on Vietnamese Catfish

A large literature studies the effects of trade policy changes on developing-country exports on household incomes, and recent contributions have increasingly addressed the effects of administered protection, such as anti-dumping duties. In 2003 the United States imposed anti-dumping tariffs on imports of catfish from Vietnam ranging from 37 to 64 percent. As a result, Vietnamese exports of catfish to the U.S. market declined sharply, thus providing a unique opportunity to study the effects of U.S. trade policy changes on Vietnamese families. Using data on Vietnamese households, the authors study the responses of catfish producers in the Mekong delta of Vietnam between 2002 and 2004. The evidence suggests that the rate of growth of income of households that depended on catfish sales was significantly affected. In addition, the anti-dumping duties triggered significant exit from catfish farming. Households adjusted by moving out of catfish aquaculture and into wage labor markets and agriculture, but not into other aquaculture activities. Finally, the evidence also suggests that households found it difficult to change their catfish production levels, and that performance in aquaculture affects other household economic activities.