Huey-Lin Lee

The impact of climate change on global food supply and demand, food prices, and land use.

Climate change induced crop yield change affects food production of countries to varying degrees, depending on the location of the farming activities. Differentiated yield changes of crops may lead to reallocation of agricultural land among uses. Key food exporters may reshuffle due to diverse climate change impact on crop farming among countries. We use a multi-region, multi-sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, which considers crop suitability of land in the optimal reallocation decision of land between uses, to simulate the impact on global food production, prices, and land use of crop yield change due to climate change as projected under the IPCC SRES scenario A2. Our findings show that developing countries are more adversely affected by climate change than developed countries. Developed countries are mostly located in higher latitudes, and climate change benefits the crop yield of these areas. In contrast, developing countries of the lower latitudes suffer from the reduction in crop yield being induced by climate change. Considering the fast growing population in the developing world, developed countries are expected to serve as the world’s key food exporters by 2020 should the climate change occurs as scenario A2 indicates.

An economy-wide analysis of impacts on Taiwan of reducing tariff escalation on agriculture-related products in WTO Doha Round negotiations

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to assess the degree of tariff escalation in Taiwans agriculture-related commodities and the economy-wide impact of tariff harmonization. Design/methodology/approach - – A computable general equilibrium model of the Taiwan economy is applied to simulate for the economy-wide impact of three alternative proposals that reduce tariff rates as well as the degree of tariff escalation in agriculture-related products. Findings - – The paper shows that reduction in tariff wedge helps increase social welfare of Taiwan at the expense of some agricultural sectors. Based on the pair-wise comparisons of the three tariff reduction proposals, the scenario where the upstream products have the least reduction would have agricultural sectors fare better than in the other scenarios where more negative impact on output and employment would occur to agricultural sectors. Originality/value - – The paper assesses quantitatively the economy-wide impact of reducing tariff wedges between unprocessed and processed products, which is rarely seen in the literature using a detailed computable general equilibrium model.