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WTO Issues
Regional Economic
Cooperation
Developmental
Issues
CUTS CITEE in Action
Call for Publications
WTO Issues
The Challenge of
Interpreting WTO-Plus' Provisions
This paper seeks to identify the special interpretive issues raised by the
China Accession Protocol (the "Protocol"), focusing on its provisions that
impose on China obligations more stringent than those imposed by general
WTO disciplines. These so-called “WTO-plus” obligations have already
become involved in several pending WTO disputes. Yet, how to interpret
them remains uncharted territory. Interpretation of the China-specific
provisions presents a special challenge to the panels and the Appellate
Body………
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1156861
Services Trade and Investment Liberalisation, and Domestic Regulation: A
Summary of Six Country Case Studies
The service sector has become an increasingly important sector in
national output and employment of developing countries. For many
developing economies and least developed countries (LDCs), services
constitute a fast growing and often dominant sector in Gross Domestic
Product (GDP), with important forward and backward linkages to other
sectors of the economy. With growing global trade and investment flows in
services driven by liberalisation and deregulation of economies,
technological advances ………
http://www.thecommonwealth.org/shared_asp_files/GFSR.asp?NodeID=178430
The Development
Promise: Can the Doha Development Agenda Deliver for Least Developed
Countries?
The benefits least developed countries
(LDCs) can draw from a multilateral trade reform as designed by the
modalities made public in May 2008 are negligible, and some countries will
even face adverse effects. World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiators
should make a supplementary effort in favor of the poorest countries. The
Duty-Free Quota-Free (DFQF) Initiative moves in the right direction, but
it should be extended not only from a product point of view—with a 100,
not 97, percent application ………
http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/ib/wtobriefnote.pdf
Developing Countries in the WTO System: Applying Robert Hudec's
Analysis to the Doha Round
In his 1987 Developing Countries in the GATT System, Robert Hudec
concluded that the identity of developing countries in the GATT system was
primarily a matter of their demanding non-reciprocal and preferential
treatment, developed countries responding grudgingly to those demands and
that this situation had been unfruitful either to support developing
country reforms or to discipline developed country restrictions aimed at
developing countries. Hudec was pessimistic about the relationship
becoming ………
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1157608
WTO Compatibility and the Legal Form of EPAs: A Case
Study of Eastern and Southern Africa
This paper considers the compatibility of
Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the European Commission
(EC) and African-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) countries with the law of the
World Trade Organisation. The Eastern and Southern African EPAs are used
as a case study. Three possibilities for compatibility are examined. The
waiver option is rejected as overly vulnerable to change. It is argued
that it is probably possible to justify the agreements under the Enabling
Clause, particularly for Eastern and Southern African EPAs.
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1157511
Regional Economic
Cooperation
Emerging
Asian Regionalism - A Partnership for Shared Prosperity
Asia’s economies are increasingly vital to each other— and to the
world. Asia’s output today roughly equals that of Europe or North
America, and may well be 50% larger than theirs will be by 2020, in
terms of purchasing power parity. The challenge for a prosperous and
interdependent Asia is to strengthen and spread the benefits of
regional cooperation while playing a substantial, constructive role
in global economic leadership. As Asia’s economies have grown larger
and more complex ………
http://www.adb.org/Documents/Books/Emerging-Asian-Regionalism/default.asp
Has SL-India trade saturated?
The recent study by UNCTAD India, and the Asian Development Bank has
estimated the potential trade between country's in the South Asia
region at $8000 million based on the averages from 1995-2005 whilst,
the actual trade registers at $3500 million which is a very
interesting dimension given the issues that Sri Lanka is up against
like the EU GSP+ challenge and the down turn of the US economy which
are core markets for Sri Lanka's exports.
http://www.worldtradereview.com/news.asp?pType=N&iType=A&iID=184&siD=14&nID=41785
Priority Integration Sectors in ASEAN: Supply-side Implications and
Options
There are 12 priority integration sectors of strategic
importance for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Exports from the nine largely goods sectors, with almost three
quarters of merchandise export value, are dominated by
electronics-related equipment and products. Priority goods have
diverse supply and trade characteristics but among the common
performance issues and development options for attention in ASEAN
are the high levels of trade and nontrade costs and complications.
http://www.adb.org/Documents/Periodicals/ADR/pdf/ADR-Vol24-2-Wattanapruttipaisan.pdf
EU-African Economic Relations: Continuing Dominance, Traded for Aid?
Promising growth rates, increased trade, and competition among major
global players for African resources have boosted the development
and bargaining power of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in relation to the
EU. However, Africa's least developed countries remain vulnerable to
external shocks. Academic analysis is still too heavily influenced
by scholastic controversies. Neither the controversy over “big-push”
concepts nor the blaming of African culture as an impediment to
growth or good government ………
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/9434/1/MPRA_paper_9434.pdf
A Relational Theory of Regional Economic
Integration-Implications for Africa
The thesis of this paper is that regional economic integration is the
product of structuring and managing vertical, horizontal and vertico-horizontal
relations among states, laws, institutions and legal systems, and that
true and effective integration results from properly structuring and
managing these relations using relational instruments of law for economic
integration. It argues that past African economic integration initiatives
neglected relational instruments and the success or otherwise of the
current wave ………
http://www.ssrn.com/link/SIEL-Inaugural-Conference.html
Developmental
Issues
Agricultural R&D Policy and Institutional Reforms: Learning from the
Experiences of India and China
Studies have shown that agricultural R&D has been one of the important
sources of agricultural growth and also helped in reducing poverty [Alston
et al 2000; Fan et al 1999 and Fan et al 2002]. In spite of these
impressive growth and equity impacts, public funding for agricultural R&D
has come under scrutiny in recent past because of uneven performance of
agriculture, as well as due to the factors relating to R&D. Inefficiencies
of the public research systems manifested during protected socio-
political ………
http://www.epw.org.in/epw//uploads/articles/12405.pdf
The Global Food Crisis: Causes, Severity and Outlook
Global food prices witnessed a very sharp increase in 2007 and they are
continuing to rise. Initially it was thought that the increase in food prices
was a part of their cyclical nature, aggravated by the adverse impact of weather
on production in some parts of the world. However, the continuing surge and the
high level of global food prices seen so far in 2008 make it abundantly clear
that the recent trend cannot be attributed to any volatility of international
prices (Figure 1, p 116), and there are fears that food prices………
http://www.epw.org.in/epw//uploads/articles/12401.pdf
Aid Effectiveness after Accra: How to Reform the ‘Paris
Agenda’
The need for an open and honest debate on aid effectiveness has never been more
urgent. Will Accra prove to be the turning point? Political change in aid
recipient countries is more important than anyone is admitting in the Paris
Declaration debate. Donor alignment efforts are compromised by a damaging mix of
risk avoidance and political correctness. Both donors and country authorities
should assume greater responsibility for their own incentive structures.
http://www.odi.org.uk/publications/briefing/bp39-july08-aid-effectiveness.pdf
Development under
Conditions of Inequality and Distrust Social Cohesion in Latin America
This paper analyzes the role of social cohesion in economic and institutional
development and, broadly, the creation of welfare in Latin America. The paper
defines the concept of social cohesion with reference to the notions of social
capital and inequality. Using data and literature on Latin America, the paper
argues that low interpersonal trust and entrenched inequality interfere with
cohesion. The paper develops and introduces an exploratory index of cohesion
structured around the definition proposed. Relying on correlations ………
http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/dp/IFPRIDP00777.pdf
The Blame Game: Who is
Behind the World Food Price Crisis?
World prices for basic staples have skyrocketed up 83 percent compared to three
years ago while hunger and destitution reaches record levels. Corn registered a
31 percent increase between March 2007-2008, rice 74 percent, soya 87 percent
and wheat a whopping 130 percent. Policy makers and media continue to place
blame for skyrocketing prices on a variety of factors, including high fuel
costs, bad weather in key food producing countries, and the diversion of land to
biofuels.
http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/pdfs/Blame_Game_Brief.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
This e-newsletter is
compiled by the CUTS CITEE team, CUTS
International
Please send us your
comments on the E-Newsletter to
citee@cuts.org
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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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