Abstract

Some researchers argue that the lack of agricultural trade liberalization is explained by the existence of domestic support and political bias. This paper considers the new advances of the International Social Networks literature to show that even in a world without these features, countries do not have incentives to form a multilateral agreement in agriculture as this equates to a structural problem. It also shows that the use of compensatory payments could help to modify the international network architecture in favour of a multilateral agreement. On the contrary, decoupled payments cannot be used to stimulate trade in this theoretical paradigm.