ABSTRACT
Agriculture tends to be neglected when researchers turn to general studies of international trade. The reasons offered for such neglect help to set the stage for this analysis. The economic and political stakes in trade in general are obviously quite high. Total world trade among countries in 1977 reached about one trillion dollars. For the United States alone, hundreds of thousands of jobs are riding on particular trade decisions. Improved knowledge about trade is vitally needed in light of the multilateral trade negotiation undertaken in Geneva. Agriculture gained little from the Kennedy Round of negotiations. The low-income countries clamor for a new international economic order. Clearly they view institutional arrangements as a potential means of transferring resources from the high-income countries to them. Transportation data constitute a major challenge to empirical research in international trade. There is a maze of rates, and it is difficult to make sense out of them.
