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Jaeger examines the relationship between government policy and agriculttal performance in Sub-Saharan Africa between 1970 and 1987. Using newly compiled data enabling a wider range of empirical analyses, the study assesses, the impact of policy distortions on productivity over tune and across countries. It assesses export agriculture and food production sFparately.

eThe analysis confirns that the deterioration oAfrica's agricultual exports during the 1970s snd early 1980s was associated with agriculture's high levels of direct taxation and of indirect taxation thrtugh govermnent controls and overvalued currencies. Goverment controls in the marketing and pricing of export crops have contributed to thc detetioration in export perfirmance. But the large _indirect_ distortions and disincentives caused by exchange rate policies are what have distinguished African policy environments from those in non-African developing countries. Econometrc rerylts show that the responsiveness of agricultural exports to change in incenttives is moderate in the short run for countries exporting tree crops but more elastic in countries exporting annual crops.

The author also investigates Africa's chronic food crises and questions the conventional wisdom tiha rising food imports and declining per capita production reflect primarily a production problem. Econometric results indicate that most of the rise in Africa's food imports Is associated with shifting demand toward imported foods, rather than a failure of supply, The main factors causing the shift in demand are increasing urbanizatiopi, higher import capacity, and exchange rate distortions tAat make imported food relatively cheap. When the variation of these factors has been taken into account, the remaining unexplained trend is only I percent a year, caused in part by, declining interational prices for wheat and rice.

r Jaeger establishes a link between policy reforms and the iniprovements observed in agricultural perfortance in the late 1980s. Countries with favorable policy environments have performed better in the 1980s, on average, than those with unfavorable policy e9vironments. This has been true both in agriculture and in overall economic growth. And in countries where policy reform progams resulted in sinificant and sustained improvements in 'Incentves (for example, Ghana and Togno), productivity has improved substantially. But in countries where reforis havenot led to improved incentives or where the imProvements, were short-lived (for example, Tanzania and Zaire), little response was observable.

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