Agricultural trade distortions during the global financial crisis
研究了全球金融危机期间各国对粮食价格飙升的贸易政策反应，发现出口国提高出口壁垒、进口国降低进口限制，加剧了价格波动，呼吁WTO加强出口和进口限制的纪律。
Import barriers are often raised during turbulent times, as governments worry about immediate domestic concerns such as unemployment. The recent global financial crisis, however, was accompanied by an \nexogenous upward spike in the international price of food, which led some countries to raise export barriers, thereby exacerbating both the price spike and the international welfare transfer associated with that change in the terms of trade. As in previous price-spike periods, that response by some food-exporting countries was accompanied by a \nlowering of import restrictions by numerous food-importing countries, further exacerbating the international price spike. This paper provides new evidence up to 2010 on the extent of the change in domestic relative to international prices in both groups of countries, and compares it with responses during two previous food price-spike periods. It concludes that there is a need for stronger World Trade Organization disciplines on export as well as import restrictions, so as to limit the extent to which beggar-thy-neighbour \ngovernment responses to international price spikes (up or down) exacerbate those shocks.