Monitoring Agriculture Policy at the WTO: Insights from a New Quantitative Database

In this paper, we build a quantitative database of the questions raised in the World Trade Organization (WTO) Committee on Agriculture (CoA) matching questions with the corresponding value of trade. Using this newly built database, we are able to show that (i) members’ concerns about trade policy measures applied by other members cover on average 16% of global trade in agriculture; (ii) the activity of the committee increases in the aftermath of a new agreement, during a food crisis and has shifted over time from questions about market access (MA) policies to questions on domestic support, thus pointing at the need to further cooperation on some of these issues; (iii) 20% of the questions relate to trade policy measures that have not been notified at the WTO, thus representing a significant source of information for researchers to fill the gaps in notifications; and (iv) there is a strong correlation between members participation in the CoA and their share of trade in agriculture, yet questions on seeds, oils and animal fats, cereals, and beverages are well above what one would expect on the basis of the trade importance of these sectors. These findings illustrate the importance of building quantitative databases from the information collected in WTO committees to analyse trends in trade policy concerns by members and factors affecting these trends and to assess the impact of discussions in committees on trade.