Trade Liberalization and Rural Poverty (Thomas Hertel, Purdue University and Terry Sicular, University of Western Ontario, organizers) AGRICULTURAL TRADE LIBERALIZATION AND POVERTY DYNAMICS IN THREE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Many developing countries implemented sweeping agricultural reforms over the last decade. Reforms have included the removal of quotas and price controls, changes in in-ternational trade barriers, and the commer-cialization and privatization of state market-ing boards for key crops. These reforms have often generated intense criticism from groups claiming that they hurt poor farmers and poor households. This concern has generated an ex-tensive literature on the economics of agri-cultural trade reform in developing countries, much of which has focused on explaining the large variations in supply response across countries, regions and households (e.g., Key, Sadoulet, and De Janvry). In addition, a num-ber of papers have attempted to simulate the impact on poverty using household survey data and actual or predicted price changes (e.g., Chen and Ravallion). However, in many cases the true impact of agricultural reform is dif-ficult to determine. In part this is because the analysis is based upon household surveys at a single point in time, so that the final (post-adjustment) consequences upon individ