Crop failure, price regulation, and emergency imports of Japan's rice sector in 1993

In 1993, an extraordinarily cool summer in Japan brought about low rice yields, which caused considerable disturbances to the rice markets. Japan imported a large amount of rice as an emergency measure. Two controversies about Japan's rice policies were raised, particularly in that period. The first centred on the effectiveness of the price regulation policies in stabilizing rice prices and farmers' incomes. The second involved the newspapers' arguments that the emergency imports harmed other countries, especially developing countries. These controversies were examined with a world trade computable general equilibrium model.