| The main purpose of this dissertation was to evaluate how liberalization of agricultural markets, as emerged from the Uruguay round of negotiations, alter existing trade patterns. The study provides welfare estimations of full and partial trade liberalization in selected agricultural processed products of importance in U.S.-Taiwanese trade.;The Static World Policy Simulation Model (SWOPSIM) is used to measure the welfare implications and the economic impacts of trade liberalization under two different scenarios. One in which both U.S. and Taiwan remove all the support to their agricultural sector and fully abolish trade restrictions on agricultural imports. The second estimates the impact of trade liberalization if both countries eliminate only part of the support, and partially abolish trade restrictions on agricultural commodities. The SWOPSIM model is a static, partial equilibrium model which examines the economic relationships within a sector. It is characterized by an economic structure that includes constant elasticity domestic demand and supply equations and summary policy measures.;The results suggest that under multilateral trade liberalization world market prices of the studied agricultural commodities would generally move upwards, domestic price variability would increase, and world trade volume would expand. U.S. import demand for all Taiwanese commodities increase substantially, and producers of the selected commodities in Taiwan would gain. Rising world prices, however, would hurt consumers.;In general, Taiwan's net welfare would improve due to the reduction in production support, and lower consumer prices. Net welfare gains are also higher in the U.S. with lower consumer prices due to the elimination of import taxes, and increased imports under free trade conditions. |
