My Policies or Yours: Do OECD Agricultural Policies Affect Poverty in Developing Countries?

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“The rural poor, growing maize for subsistence [see] their livelihoods destroyed by a flood of cheap US imports.”- Oxfam briefing on agricultural subsidies, 2002 “It must be acknowledged that unqualified assertions by many, including the heads of some multilateral institutions, that subsidies and other interventions in agriculture in the OECD countries are hurting the poor countries are not grounded in facts … The claim that the change will bring net gains to the least developed countries as a whole is at best questionable and at worst outright wrong.”- Economist Arvind Panagariya, 2002 Developed countries heavily subsidize their agricultural sectors. The magnitude of these subsidies is striking, compared to both the size of the agricultural sector in these countries, and incomes in poor countries. Transfers to agricultural producers from 1 The authors would like to thank Pongrat Aroonvatanaporn, Shilpa Phadke and Jesse Tack for excellent research assistance. They thank Ann Harrison an

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