africa

Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
Figure 12.5: Africa: Average Political Competition by Year, 1975-2005
Source: World Bank, Database of Political Institutions (Beck and Clarke, 2001).
12.4.1.2 Policy choices
When focusing on agriculture, we make use of a measure derived by the World
Bank when preparing for the 2008 World Development Report, which focused on
agriculture (World Bank, 2007). Called the relative rate of assistance, or RRA, the
measure reflects the manner in which government intervention in markets shifts
relative prices between agricultural and non-agricultural commodities, and is calculated
as the ratio of policy interventions across sectors:
where NRAag and NRAnonag refer to the nominal rates of assistance to the producers
of agricultural and non-agricultural products. The assistance takes the form of
policies that alter the level of domestic prices relative to those in global markets. The
imposition of an ad valorem tariff on imports of manufactured goods, for example,
would generate an increase in the NRAnonag and therefore trigger a decrease in
the RRA, thus signaling a shift in relative prices against farmers and in favor of the
manufacturing sector. Negative values of RRA indicate that government policies
favor consumers of agricultural products, i.e. the presence of urban bias; an increase
in the value of RRA indicates a shift in favor of agricultural producers.
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