Fossil Fuel Subsidies & Social Safety Nets

The European Commission's recommendations for reforming the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) - the so-called "Health Check" -have come under criticism from European governments and environmental campaigners, albeit for different reasons. On 20 November the EC unveiled proposals for the next phase of changes to European agricultural policy.

A jump in fuel prices is never welcome by the general populace. Yet in Nigeria, where fuel prices are regulated, the government has recently allowed the price of refined petroleum products' to rise, and is prepared to continue doing so. The Nigerian government routinely imports petroleum and sells these imports at below cost on the domestic market to keep price levels down.

A searchable database that tracks federal spending by the United States government will come on-line by 2008, following legislation passed in September. The Web-based search engine, which will include all federal funding to public and private organizations, has been hailed as a victory for transparency in government operations by a broad coalition of advocacy groups.

The primary tools for determining the impact trade liberalization will have on poverty are multi-country Computable General Equilibrium Models (CGEM). However, the models that have been derived from this method have come to some very different results. In recent years these results have also been revised downwards, predicting more moderate gains from trade liberalization. Antoine Boukt, Sr. Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), examines this phenomenon in detail, comparing the merits of the various methodologies, and explaining why their results diverge.