Auteur :
Ravallion
Martin
Lokshin
Michael
Collectivite Auteur :
World Bank
Année de Publication :
2004
Type : Etude
Thème : Commerce
Couverture :
Maroc
We use Morocco’s national survey of living standards to measure the short-term welfare impacts of prior estimates of the price changes attributed to various agricultural trade reform scenarios for de-protecting cereals — the country’s main foodstaple. We find small impacts on mean consumption and inequality in the aggregate. There are both winners and losers and (contrary to past claims) the rural poor are worse off on average after de-protection. We decompose the aggregate impact on inequality into a “vertical” component (between people at different pre-reform welfare levels) and a “horizontal” component (between people at the same pre-reform welfare). There is a large horizontal component, which dominates the vertical impact of full de-protection. The diverse impacts reflect a degree of observable heterogeneity in consumption behavior and income sources, with implications for social protection policies.