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WTO Issues
Regional Economic
Cooperation
Developmental
Issues
CUTS CITEE in Action
Call for Publications
WTO Issues
A new deadline for Doha?
The
recent declaration after a meeting of trade ministers and negotiators of
six key countries at New Delhi may not mark the breakthrough that the WTO
members as a whole were hoping for to put the derailed Doha round back on
track. Yet the degree of optimism evinced by representatives of India,
Brazil, the United States, the European Union, Japan, and Australia to
facilitate the completion of the talks by the end of 2007 is significant.
http://www.hindu.com/2007/04/17/stories/2007041702591000.htm
What Can Researchers Learn From the Suspension of the
Doha Round Negotiations in 2006?
By Simon J. Evenett
The Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations was
suspended for almost six months in 2006. The purpose of this paper is to
ask what scholars can learn about the political economy of reciprocal
trade liberalisation from this suspension. Specifically, four potential
explanations for this suspension are examined and, in turn, these suggest
a number of questions that researchers and interested analysts may wish to
pursue in the future.
http://www.vwa.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/dp2007/DP-17-Ev.pdf
The Trade Strategy of the European Union: Time for a Rethink?
The European Union is the world's largest trader, a fact that on the face
of it ought to convert into considerable clout in international commercial
negotiations. Yet, since the World Trade Organization's (WTO's) creation
in 1995, it is difficult to point to a string of successes for the
European Commission's (EC's) often beleaguered trade negotiators. Even the
enthusiasm associated with the launch of the Doha Round in 2001 has
dissipated as these negotiations have repeatedly stalled.
http://www.evenett.com/working/BruegelPaper.pdf
The Impact of
Kazakhstan Accession To The World Trade Organisation: A Quantitative
Assessment
In this paper we employ a computable general equilibrium model of the
Kazakhstan economy to assess the impact of accession to the World Trade
Organization (WTO), which encompasses (1) improved market access; (2)
Kazakhstan tariff reduction; (3) reduction of barriers against entry by
multinational service providers; and (4) reform of local content and VAT
policies confronting multinational firms in the oil sector.
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/
Beyond the Divide: The Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights and the World Trade Organization
As a
matter of international law, both the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Economic Rights (ICESCR) and the World Trade Organization (WTO)
are, in the first instance, treaty regimes. The authors focus on those
aspects of economic, social and cultural rights that are most directly
linked to human security, a fundamental value also acknowledged in various
ways in the WTO Agreements and their interpretation. Accordingly, they
examine aspects of the right to work, the right to health and the right to
food and the impact of WTO rules and their interpretation.
http://www.fes-geneva.org/publications/OccasionalPapers/FESOccPapers30.pdf
Possibility of
obtaining a new ACP-EC waiver at the WTO
This
discussion paper tries to examine whether the diplomatic and trade
environment at the WTO is favourable to the introduction of a new waiver
that would extend the Cotonou trade regime between the ACP countries and
the European Union which is due to expire on December 31, 2007. If this
were the case, what would be the obstacles that must be overcome by the
two partners, both from a procedural and legal standpoint, to be able to
negotiate its acceptance between now and 31 December 2007?
http://fesportal.fes.de/
Regional Economic
Cooperation
Making Saarc
Relevant
For once in its 22-years lacklustre existence, the 14th SAARC summit
seems to have made a visible endeavour to break the logjam which had
virtually crippled the organization for so long. The long awaited
initiative has come from the big brother India with the grant of
duty free access to goods from Least Developed countries in South
Asia and an acknowledgement by Indian Prime Minister that
differences within the SAARC fraternity had thwarted the
organization from achieving its full potential.
http://www.worldtradereview.com/news.asp?pType=S&sID=13&iID=154&iType=A&lType=D
Maintaining Policy Space for
Development: A Case Study on IP Technical Assistance in FTAs
This study addresses the issue of how technical assistance is dealt
with in the intellectual property (IP) chapters of Free Trade
Agreements (FTAs). It looks at the impact of such obligations and
the challenges faced by developing countries with regard to their
implementation, as well as human and institutional capacity
building. It pays particular attention to FTAs between the US and a
number of developing countries, especially those in Latin America.
It centres its analysis on the needs and issues arising from the
implementation phase of FTAs once the negotiation phase has ended.
http://www.iprsonline.org/resources/docs/Roffe-Vivas-Vea%20Blue19.pdf
Economic Partnership
Agreements: Assessing Potential Implications from Some Alternative
Scenarios
This paper has evaluated the possible effects of the Economic
Partnership Agreement (EPA) using a global general equilibrium
modelling framework, namely the GTAP model. The latest version of
the GTAP database (version 6.22) has been employed as a benchmark
database. The study has explored the implications of different EPA
scenarios (in terms of changes in GDP, exports, and other measures
for welfare) for African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (both
developing and LDCs), based on the sample of countries in the
database.
http://fesportal.fes.de/
Signing Away The Future: How trade and
investment agreements between rich and poor countries undermine
development
Powerful countries, led by the USA and the European Union (EU), are
pursuing regional and bilateral free trade agreements with
unprecedented vigour. This is happening without the fanfare of
global summitry and international press coverage. Around 25
developing countries have now signed free trade agreements with
developed countries, and more than 100 are engaged in negotiations.
An average of two bilateral investment treaties are signed every
week.
http://www.oxfamamerica.org/newsandpublications/publications/briefing_papers/signing-away-the-future/SigningAwaytheFuture.pdf
Relevance of ‘Policy Space’ for
Development: Implications for Multilateral Trade Negotiations
This
paper makes a compelling case for public intervention for fostering
industrial development. Summary of evidence that present day developed
countries have extensively employed infant industry protection, industrial
policy and performance requirements, subsidies, government procurement and
regional economic integration among other policies in their process of
industrialisation. Many of these policies have also been effectively and
successfully emulated by the newly industrializing economies in East Asia
to build internationally competitive modern industries (March 2007).
http://ris.org.in/dp120_pap.pdf
Are Regional Trade Agreements in Asia Stumbling or
Building Blocks?
Implications for the Mekong-3 Countries
Is the recent proliferation of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) in Asia a
healthy development, or runs the risk of turning into an unmanageable “noodle
bowl” in the future? The results show that membership in the Asian RTAs
considered in this study have not, to date, occurred at the expense of trade
with nonmembers, as most Asian countries’ integration with the global economy
preceded regional integration.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2007/wp0753.pdf
Developmental
Issues
Should the Green Box be Modified?
The concept of agricultural subsidies that have no (or at most minimal)
production and trade-distorting effects was introduced in the Uruguay
Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA). It provided a direct link between
the parallel processes of domestic agricultural policy reform. The process
of moving from price support to direct payments has been an essential part
of domestic reforms. The designation in the URAA of certain types of
agricultural payments that are free from reduction commitments is thus
pivotal for the continuation of domestic policy reform.
http://www.agritrade.org/Publications/DiscussionPapers/Green_Box.pdf
Increasing the contribution of small-scale fisheries to
poverty alleviation and food security
The first section discusses the
concepts of poverty, vulnerability and food security, and briefly outlines how
these concepts have evolved in recent years within the field of fisheries. The
second section reviews the actual and potential contribution of small-scale
fisheries to poverty alleviation and food security. The third and main section
of the document discusses ways of increasing the contribution of small-scale
fisheries to poverty alleviation and food security through nine main entry
points.
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/009/a0965e/a0965e00.pdf
Aid allocation and the MDGs
Developing countries receive very
different amounts of aid. Even considering just low-income countries, amounts
ranged in 2004 from around $90 per capita in Zambia and Senegal to less than $5
per capita in Nigeria and less than $1 per capita in India (World Bank, 2006).
Are these differences justified, and if not, what would an improved allocation
look like? ‘Poverty-efficiency’ is a simple and flexible principle for making
aid allocation decisions. In terms of the MDGs, it would imply greater emphasis
on global as opposed to country-level targets.
http://www.odi.org.uk/publications/briefing/bp_april07_aid_allocation.pdf
India’s Rising Role in Asia
This paper analyses recent developments
in India’s external economic relations, with particular reference to Asia. The
paper demonstrates that India’s qualitative and quantitative integration with
the rest of Asia (and the world) is far deeper than commonly perceived. India
must continue with the integration process; and with efforts to shift to 8 to 10
per cent sustained growth path if it is to reduce poverty and improve quality of
life of its 1.1 billion people.
http://ris.org.in/dp121_pap.pdf
Beyond Microfinance: Getting Capital to
Small and Medium Enterprises to Fuel Faster Development
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs),
typically employing between 10 and 250 workers, form the backbone of modern
economies and can be crucial engines of development through their role as
seedbeds of innovation. In much of the developing world, though, SMEs are
under-represented, stifled by perverse regulatory climates and poor access to
inputs. A critical missing ingredient is often capital (March 2007).
http://www3.brookings.edu/comm/policybriefs/pb159.pdf
Guinea: Poverty Reduction
Strategy Paper—Third Annual Progress Report
In 2005, the Poverty Reduction Strategy
(PRS) was implemented in an overall context characterized by an obvious dearth
of development funding. More specifically, the economic context continues to
suffer from inadequate external financial assistance and from high inflation
(29.7 percent) resulting from the steep depreciation of the Guinean franc. The
worsening of inflation and the severe depreciation of the Guinean franc have
contributed to the precipitous decline in household purchasing power, thereby
rendering living conditions even more precarious.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2007/cr07140.pdf
Moving out of
poverty – making migration work better for poor people
For many poor people around the world migration is a way of life, and has been
for centuries. But globalisation has radically altered the scale of migration:
people are now more aware of opportunities elsewhere and it has become easier
for them to travel. Women in Asian countries now travel to the Gulf States and
back. Millions of Chinese people travel within China every year to work. Across
the developing world, the movement between rural and urban areas is rising.
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/migration-policy.pdf
Call for
Publications
For
experts publishing articles in South Asian newspapers/publications,
civil society
organisations, research
institutes and academics, if you
would like your publication’s abstract and weblink to distributed to CUTS
International network (above 5,000
recipients all over the world) and added to the Economiquity
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Disclaimer
Views expressed in these articles and papers are those of the respective
authors and in no way reflect the official positions of CUTS and the
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