Agriculture and the WTO Ingco, Merlinda; Nash, John D
2004, 03-17-2004, 20040101
eBook, Book
Open access
Developing Countries, Agriculture and the WTO explores the key issues and options in agricultural trade liberalization from a developing country perspective. The handbook is of particular interest ...for both developed and developing countries. Chapters cover market access, domestic support, export competition, quota administration methods, food security, biotechnology, intellectual property rights, agricultural trade under the URAA, and many other subjects, always focusing on the question of how the outcome of the WTO negotiations can be made pro-development. Readers are assumed to have at least a basic knowledge of agricultural trade, although many may also be experts in their own areas. Material is covered in summary and in comprehensive detail with supporting data tables, text boxes, figures, and a detailed table of contents. Many chapters have a substantial bibliography, listings of online resources, and tables summarizing the major points of WTO member country proposals that deal directly with each chapter topic.
Ukraine's Trade Policy identifies the key drivers of Ukraine's recent trade performance, assesses current trade policies, and proposes recommendations to strengthen the Ukraines trade integration ...strategy. It also identifies core bottlenecks in the ongoing integration processes, including global and regional integration. The study concludes that the main obstacles to furthering Ukraines trade integration are domestic, and relate to deficiencies in the business environment. Problems in customs administration, standardization, and administrative barriers for new entry require immediate attention. The report highlights specific policy issues that hamper WTO accession, such as trade legislation, protection of intellectual property rights, government support for specific industries, and export restrictions. It also recommends improvements in the structure of Ukraines import tariffs, reform of both the regime of free economic zones and mechanism of VAT refund, and investment in a major upgrade of government capacity for investment and export promotion. The report also draws attention to the importance of the post-WTO accession agenda for Ukraine. To take advantage of WTO membership, the Government will need to undertake significant institutional reforms to implement WTO regulatory rules in ways that facilitate integration into the world economy and provide benefits to private sector participants.
The international trade regulatory system is a dynamic system that has been evolving throughout its history. Tension and conflict are part of the system. While calls for the abolition of the ...principal trade regulation authority, the WTO, have failed to understand this nature of the system, proponents for reforms have so far not paid sufficient attention to the evolving nature of tension and conflict. This book examines the evolving dynamics in international trade regulation from the conclusion of GATT in 1947 to the current crisis facing the WTO, from a perspective of emerging powers of developing countries with a focus of China as the latest force that demands reforms of the international trade regulatory regime. There is an extensive body of scholarship on ideological struggles, the rise of developing countries, geopolitical contest, the emerging powers (especially China), the use, misuse or abuse of trading rules and so on. There is, however, a lack of a single concise research book that synthesises these underlying causes and factors into a coherent and precise analytical theme. This book attempts to fill this research gap by building upon the existing scholarship and placing the various tensions and conflicts in a perspective that treats them as dynamic factors that have propelled a continuing process of evolution of the international trade regulation. The book will interest those researching on international trade regulation as well as development studies.
Regional Economic Outlook: Sub-Saharan Africa Prepared by the Policy Wing of the IMF African Department, this first, annual issue of Regional Economic Outlook: Sub-Saharan Africa analyzes economic, ...trade, and institutional issues in 2004, and prospects in 2005, for the 42 countries covered by the Department (for data reasons, Eritrea and Liberia are excluded). Topics examined include responses to exogenous shocks, growth performance and growth-enhancing policies, and the effectiveness of regional trade arrangements. Detailed aggregate and country data (as of February 24, 2005) are provided in an appendix and a statistical appendix, and a list of relevant publications by the African Department is included.
The estimated coefficient of distance on the volume of trade is generally found to increase rather than decrease through time using the traditional gravity model of trade. This distance puzzle proved ...robust to several ad hoc versions of the model using data for 1962-96 for a large sample of 130 countries. The introduction of an "augmented" barrier to trade function removes the paradox, yielding a decline in the estimate of the elasticity of trade to distance of about 11 percent over the 35-year period for the whole sample. However, the "death of distance" is shown to be largely confined to bilateral trade between rich countries, with poor countries becoming marginalized.
The introduction of the euro generated substantial interest in measuring the impact of currency unions (CUs) on trade flows. Rose's (2000) initial estimates suggested a tripling of trade and created ...a literature in search of "more reasonable" CU effects. A recent meta-analysis of this literature shows that subsequent papers quantify CU trade impacts at 30-90 percent. However, most recent studies use shorter time series and fewer countries than Rose in his original work. We revisit Rose's original benchmark, extend the dataset, and address Baldwin's (2006) critiques regarding the proper specification of gravity models in large panels by simultaneously accounting for multilateral resistance and unobserved bilateral heterogeneity. This produces a robust average CU trade effect of 45 percent. Yet, the trade impacts of individual CUs vary substantially and are generally lower than those of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Our revised benchmark can be used as a yardstick for future studies to delineate how estimates differ due to new data or differences in econometric specifications.
Services Trade and Policy Francois, Joseph; Hoekman, Bernard
Journal of economic literature,
09/2010, Volume:
48, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
A substantial body of research has taken shape on trade in services since the mid-1980s. Much of this is inspired by the WTO and regional trade agreements. However, an increasing number of papers ...focus on the impacts of unilateral services sector liberalization. The literature touches on important linkages between trade and FDI in services and the general pattern of productivity growth and economic development. This paper surveys the literature on services trade, focusing on contributions that investigate the determinants of international trade and investment in services, the potential gains from greater trade, and efforts to cooperate to achieve such liberalization through trade agreements. There is increasing evidence that services liberalization is a major potential source of gains in economic performance, including productivity in manufacturing and the coordination of activities both between and within firms. The performance of service sectors, and thus services policies, may also be an important determinant of trade volumes, the distributional effects of trade, and overall patterns of economic growth and development. At the same time, services trade is also a source of increasing political unease about the impacts of globalization on labor markets, linked to worries about offshoring and the potential pressure this places on wages in high income countries.
Until the 1990s, the main users of safeguards and antidumping laws were Australia, Canada, the European Union, and the United States. Since then, many countries have implemented such laws, leading to ...a proliferation in antidumping and safeguard activity across the world. This timely book documents the political economy surrounding the implementation of these laws in seven Latin American countries and provides details on the institutions created, implementation of the laws, and subsequent activity. It finds that, in the larger political context, antidumping and safeguards are a necessary quid pro quo to certain important sectors to obtain much more liberalized trade policies for the general economy.
This paper exploits India's rapid, comprehensive, and externally imposed trade reform to establish a causal link between changes in tariffs and firm productivity. Pro-competitive forces, resulting ...from lower tariffs on final goods, as well as access to better inputs, due to lower input tariffs, both appear to have increased firm-level productivity, with input tariffs having a larger impact. The effect was strongest in import-competing industries and industries not subject to excessive domestic regulation. While we find no evidence of a differential impact according to state-level characteristics, we observe complementarities between trade liberalization and additional industrial policy reforms.
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