This book brings together core papers by the editor and some of his colleagues during the past two decades on the role of trade openness, especially in farm products, in promoting national and global economic development. The chapters cover four areas: how national comparative advantage evolves in the course of economic growth; how agricultural markets and national and global economic welfare are affected by distortionary price and trade policies; how inefficiently non-trade concerns of societies are addressed using trade-distorting policies; and how the income distributional effects of trade policies drive the political economy of those policies.