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WTO Issues
Regional Economic
Cooperation
Developmental
Issues
CUTS CITEE in Action
Call for Publications
WTO Issues
Disconnects
at all levels
If even a more than average reader of political, economic and
business news and news about the Doha multilateral trade talks at the
World Trade Organization feels confused these days, he or she has every
reason to be. There are disconnects all around, with too many spins by too
many of the leading participants, who are trying to repeat history. Take
the simplest 'disconnect': the time-span or duration set for the
negotiations.
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/wto.info/twninfo070705.htm
The WTO and Energy: WTO Rules and Agreements of
Relevance to the Energy Sector
Energy was not specifically addressed by international agreements for a
long time, and was mostly treated in a political context as a special
case. It is now commonly accepted that the existing World Trade
Organization (WTO) rules apply equally to energy products. These rules are
not, however, well designed to address some trade-related issues in the
energy sector. The WTO addresses import barriers to a larger extent than
export barriers. In the energy sector, the trade restrictions are more
pertinent to export barriers.
http://www.trade-environment.org/output/ictsd/resource/The%20WTO%20and%20Energy.pdf
European
Community--Sugar: cross-subsidization and the World Trade Organization
An important recent World Trade
Organization dispute settlement case for many developing countries
concerned European Union exports of sugar. Brazil, Thailand, and Australia
alleged that the exports have substantially exceeded permitted levels as
established by European Union commitments in the WTO. This case had major
implications for both European Union sugar producers and developing
countries that benefited from preferential access to the European Union
market.
http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/wbkwbrwps/4336.htm
The World Trade Organisation's Doha Cotton Initiative: A Tale of Two
Issues
Four West African nations have demanded that the WTO’s Doha
Development Agenda include a Cotton Initiative that involves two issues:
cutting cotton subsidies and tariffs, and assisting farm productivity
growth in Africa. This paper provides estimates of the potential economic
impacts of (a) complete or partial removal of cotton subsidies and import
tariffs globally and (b) cotton productivity growth through the adoption
of genetically modified (GM) cotton varieties.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1003468
The WTO and its Institutional Impediments
The latest round of multilateral trade negotiations — the Doha
Round — initiated a comprehensive negotiating round set out in a complex
structure. At the same time, this Round focused attention on a
‘development agenda’, all as part of a ‘single undertaking’ with an
ambitious three year deadline. The negotiations were troubled from the
start and there are not many signs that agreement will be reached anytime
soon. Given the long standing impasse, the time is now ripe to begin
evaluating ……
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UNSWLRS/2007/46.html
Regional Economic
Cooperation
Rules of
origin and the web of East Asian free trade agreements
The authors provide an overview of the preferential rules of
origin in East Asia, highlighting the aspects that might possibly
generate some trade-chilling effects. They review characteristics of
existing preferential trade agreements with special emphasis on
lessons from the European experience, and analyze some important
features of the existing rules of origin in East and South-East
Asian regional integration agreements. The empirical analysis of the
effectiveness of preferentialism on intra-regional trade flows
focuses on the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA)…..
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/
Why are Trade Agreements Regional?
This paper shows how distance may
be used to coordinate on a unique equilibrium in which trade
agreements are regional. Trade agreement formation is modeled as
coalition formation. In a standard trade model with no distance
between countries, a familiar problem of coordination failure arises
giving rise to multiple equilibria; any one of many possible trade
agreements can form. With distance between countries, and through
strategic interaction in tariff setting, regional trade agreements
generate larger rent-shifting effects than non regional
agreements……….
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=994879
Trade and Major Power Alliance Decisions
Why would a major power form an alliance
with a much weaker state when such a state can contribute little to
the alliance's military power? Research on asymmetric alliances
suggests that the powerful state may receive non-security
compensation for these security commitments. This paper presents
evidence that trade are one such motive for asymmetric alliance
commitments. Just as fear of losing a valuable trading relationship
deters bilateral conflict between trading partners, so it also gives
states a motive to defend their trading partners from external
threats that might disrupt commerce.
http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~bfordham/tradealliance.pdf
Why is this Chapter Different from All the Others? An Examination of
Why Countries Enter into Non-Enforceable Competition Policy Chapters
in Free Trade Agreements
There has been an explosion in
the past 10-15 years of bilateral and regional free trade agreements
in Latin America (together preferential free trade agreements or
“PTAs”). The purpose of PTAs is to increase trade, regulatory and
investment liberalization. As trade liberalization requires more
than just a reduction of tariffs, PTAs include “chapters” in a
number of areas of domestic regulation. These chapters that address
domestic regulation, create binding commitments to liberalize
domestic regulation that may impact foreign trade.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1005338#PaperDownload
Emerging Middle Powers’ Soft Balancing
Strategy: State and Perspectives of the IBSA Dialogue Forum
How can weaker states influence stronger ones? This article offers a
case study of one recent exercise in coalition building among Southern
middle powers, the 'India, Brazil, South Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum'.
The analysis outlines five major points: first, it argues that the three
emerging players can be defined as middle powers in order to frame their
foreign policy behavior and options at the global level. Second, soft
balancing is a suitable concept to explain IBSA's strategy in global
institutions. Third, institutional foreign policy instruments ………..
http://www.giga-hamburg.de/
Developmental
Issues
Linking globalisation to poverty: Is globalisation good for the poor?
Globalisation is a double-edged sword, it offers new opportunities for
accelerating development and poverty reduction, but also poses challenges
that undermine potential gains for the poor. This Policy Brief examines
various transmission mechanisms, through which the process of
globalisation affects different dimensions of poverty in the developing
world, including the: globalisation–growth–inequality–poverty causal
chain; globalisation–capital and labour mobility–poverty channel, etc.
http://www.eldis.org/go/what-s-new&id=33126&type=Document
Globalization and Income Inequality: A
European Perspective
There is growing concern in Europe over the impact
of globalization on high and evenly shared living standards. These concerns have
often surfaced in response to falling labor income shares in aggregate national
income data. However, these data may tell little about the underlying
distribution of incomes based on household disposable incomes. While summary
measures of income distributions also suggest that inequality……
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2007/wp07169.pdf
What Drives China’s Growing Role in Africa?
What role does China play in Africa’s development? What drives China’s
increasing economic involvement in the continent? This paper attempts to provide
a quantified assessment of China’s multifaceted influence as market, donor,
financer and investor, and contractor and builder. Though in the past official
development aid predominated, the paper argues that government policies, markets
for each other’s exports, Africa’s demand for infrastructure …..
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2007/wp07211.pdf
International NGOs
and Poverty Reduction Strategies: The Contribution of an Asset-based Approach
This scoping study has two principle objectives. It provides a summary
of current poverty reduction strategies of US and UK-based international
non-governmental organizations (INGOs) with a special emphasis on the underlying
frameworks that form the basis of their development interventions. Secondly, the
study identifies the applicability of an asset accumulation framework to
prevailing programmatic and advocacy strategies for poverty reduction employed
by INGOs.
http://www3.brookings.edu/views/papers/200707moser.pdf
Is Food Insecurity
More Severe in South Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa?
This paper uses data from national household expenditure surveys to
explore whether food insecurity is more severe in South Asia or Sub-Saharan
Africa. It employs two indicators of the diet quantity dimension of food
insecurity, or the inability to access sufficient food: the prevalence of food
energy deficiency and the prevalence of severe food energy deficiency. It also
employs two indicators of the diet quality dimension, indicating lack of access
to nutritious food: the prevalence of low diet diversity and the percent of
energy from staple foods.
http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/dp/IFPRIDP00712.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
e-newsletter, please forward such details via email to following
address: citee@cuts.org
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compiled by the CUTS CITEE team, CUTS
International
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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
agencies supporting its projects. |
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