Trade liberalization, poverty and efficient equity

Even if trade liberalization results in aggregate welfare gains over all households, it is possible that the poorest households could lose. We illustrate two approaches to designing trade liberalization in Turkey which ensure that the poor will not lose. The first approach uses direct compensation to losers. The second approach uses limited policy reform, where exceptions to the across-the-board reform are chosen to meet the equity goal. In each case, we map out some of the efficiency costs of attaining these equity goals so as to inform policy makers about the least costly way of attaining them. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.