In response to the COVID-19 crisis, some governments have implemented export restrictions and other trade policy measures to secure their food supply. This behavior can increase global food prices, with consequences including the exacerbation of hunger and income losses for producers in export-restrict-ing countries. Intergovernmental organizations and other actors need current information on food trade policy to curb detrimental reactive policy and enable cooperation. To address this need, we provide the COVID-19 Food Trade Policy Tracker. Gathering data from sources including the media, national gov-ernments, expert input, the OECD, and the IMF, we provide up-to-date information on food trade poli-cies implemented during the COVID-19 crisis and the likely magnitude of their effects.

This report answers the question: “What guidelines can be used to identify the types of agricultural investments that have the highest economic return, where “agriculture” is broadly defined to include primary production, handling, storage, transportation, distribution, processing, and retailing?” Using the literature and MCC’s ERR analyses, we explain how agricultural investments fit in a wider development context, identify information useful to MCC’s decision making that is not provided by the ERR analyses, and suggest IFPRI tools for exploratory and ex-ante evaluative analysis that MCC can use in their decision-making process.

The purpose of this review is to assess the extent to which the research outputs of Flagship 3, cluster on The Policy Environment for Value Chains (cluster 3.1) of the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) have been used to inform decisions and behaviors of representatives of government organizations, development agencies, researchers, donors, private firms, nongovernment organizations, and other users. The assessment both reviews the achievement of past milestones as well as looks forward to how re-searchers should support the trade agenda in developing countries going forward through their research and communication of research and what should be the focus in the research agenda for developing countries. There are already ongoing and forming activities for which strategic guidance, decisions on allocation of resources across activities, or other research decisions could benefit from this assessment. Areas for prioritization include evaluation of policy changes proposed by policymakers or proactively investigated by the PIM trade team (e.g., reduction in domestic support, lowering tariffs), a trade and nutrition database, work on trade and greenhouse gas emissions, future AATM editions, improving data on trade flows, analysis of impactful events such as COVID-19 and large-scale droughts on world markets and value chains, work on the future of trade multilateralism, research on global value chains and non-tariff measures, and research on advancing value chains for competitiveness and economic development.

The World Trade Organization’s Dispute Settlement Procedure has been described as the “crown jewel” of the multilateral trading system, having been highly effective in settling a large number of disputes-without it, the results might have been much worse. Any WTO member can file a complaint against a trade practice of another member that it believes to be in violation of WTO agreements. The Dispute Settlement body then makes a ruling on the dispute. Finally, if the respondent is found guilty by the Dispute Settlement body, the respondent may either bring its practices into compliance or face authorized retaliatory trade measures by the complainant. But is the Dispute Settlement Procedure fair to developing countries, or is there some bias in favor of powerful countries? If potential retaliatory measures by a WTO member are unthreatening to a potential offender, then does the potential offender ignore rules? Do other factors, such as political power, bias which members benefit from the Dispute Settlement Procedure? One approach to investigate potential bias looks at the final outcomes of disputes, asking: do developed countries tend to ignore the Dispute Settlement body’s recommendations when facing complaints from developing countries? Investigations with this approach have found some empirical evidence of bias against developing countries, but samples of disputes are small. Another approach to investigate bias looks at Dispute Settlement body rulings, asking: does the WTO’s panel of experts tend to rule against developing countries? An investigation found that threat of retaliatory measures and asymmetric power did not bias rulings, but that countries with better legal capacity - usually more developed countries - were more likely to win disputes. We take a different approach, looking at which members file complaints to ask: given that members may not even file complaints if they expect to lose, do developing countries avoid filing complaints because they lack power?