My policies or yours

"This paper seeks to understand the impact of rich-country agricultural support policies on the poor. Using non-parametric analysis we establish the fact that the majority of poor countries are currently net food importers and have been for the past thirty years. Using a a cross-country regression framework we measure the overall impact of agricultural support policies in rich countries on average income per capita in poor countries. We find some evidence that OECD support polices are positively correlated with average incomes in food-importing countries and negatively correlated with average incomes in food-exporting countries. Using the national employment and household consumption and expenditure surveys from Mexico for the period 1991-2000, we examine the implications of a reduction in the price corn on Mexico's corn farmers. We find that the poorest corn farmers in Mexico are net consumers of corn and have been largely unaffected by changes in the price of corn. Middle income corn farmers saw their real income from corn farming fall by more than fifty percent. The real income of the largest corn farmers increased by fourty percent"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.