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Bale and Lutz, Honma and Hayami, Krueger, Schiff and Valdes have shown that agriculture in industrialized countries has been strongly protected, while in low-income countries it often has been taxed. In developing economies, the high cost of collective action by farmers together with the pressure from urban consumers and the manufacturing sector for cheap food result in taxation of agriculture in favor of the politically stronger urban and manufacturing sector. With economic development, a declining farming population finds it easier to organize and create political pressure. Concurrently, higher urban wages an_d a smaller expenditure share on food decrease urban res.istance to high food prices, and therefore lower the political cost of subsidizing Agriculture (Olson)~ With the exception of Bates (1983), most of the empirical literature on the political-economic patterns of agricultural protection and assistance ignores the role of political institutions (e.g., Anderson and Hayami, Balisacan and Roumasset, Binswanger and Scandizzo). By contrast, much of the conceptual work on the political economy of agricultural distortions emphasizes the pivotal impact of political institutions on public policy formation (Bardhan, Bates (1990), Becker~ de Janvry and Sadoulet). This paper analyzes international patterns in total agricultural protection to identify and separate the influence of political systems and rights from the effects of economic development, industrialization, constraints on tax collection, and terms of trade. The study covers 25 countries and 22 commodity groups for the period 1982-1987, and considers

This paper summarizes the potential contributions of the new institutional economics

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This paper explores the links between development assistance, agricultural output growth and imports in 56 developing economies over the period [1974][1975][1976][1977][1978][1979][1980][1981][1982][1983][1984][1985][1986][1987][1988][1989][1990]. Thc empirical model treats agricultural growth and imports, savings and aid as endogenous. The analysis also accounts for differences in macroeconomic policies. The results show that aid had a positive impact on agricultural growth. A robust relationship exits between aid and agricultural imports consistent with the argument that aid helps industrialized countries through market expansion and strengthened trade tics.