Trade and Development
44 items available
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The Trade and Development Series seeks to provide objective, accessible information about the new trade agenda. Titles in the series cover a wide range of topics, from regional trade agreements and customs reform to agriculture, intellectual property rights, services, and other key issues currently being discussed in World Trade Organization negotiations. Contributors to the series represent some of the world’s leading thinkers and specialists on international trade issues. Titles in this series undergo internal and external review under the management of the Trade Group's Advisory Board in the World Bank's Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network.
Items in this collection
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Publication
Turkey : Economic Reform and Accession to the European Union
(Washington, DC: World Bank and Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2005)This volume analyzes the economic challenges confronting Turkey in its quest to accede to the European Union (EU). It focuses on the extent to which Turkey is ready to join the Single Market, comply with the EU's body of economic regulations and directives, the Acquis Communautaire, and meet the Maastricht criteria for fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate policies. This book also provides an assessment of Turkey's national program to meet the accession requirements. It describes briefly what Turkey needs to achieve on the economic policy front to satisfy the conditions for accession, the progress to date, and the likely consequences of implementing the full body of EU requirements. The book is divided into four parts: 1) An analysis of the macroeconomic policies for EU accession; 2) An analysis of the effects of integration on key sectors: agriculture; manufacturing; services industries, including banking, telecommunications, transportation, and natural gas; and network industries; 3) An exploration of key economic policy challenges, including labor market regulation, foreign direct investment challenges, and the costs and benefits of meeting the EU environmental Acquis; and 4) The quantification of the impact of EU accession and consideration of the welfare effects of integration. While the focus is on the specific situation of Turkey, the subject will be of value to all researchers with an interest in the challenges of deeper integration through regional agreements. -
Publication
Customs Modernization Initiatives : Case Studies
(Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2004)This volume presents case studies of customs modernization initiatives in eight developing countries: Bolivia, Ghana, Morocco, Mozambique, Peru, the Philippines, Turkey, and Uganda. The purpose of these case studies was to obtain a firsthand view of how these countries undertook customs reforms and to assess their success. The overall lessons learned from these studies are presented in chapter 2 of the Customs Modernization Handbook (World Bank forthcoming), a companion volume that provides policymakers, practitioners, and project managers from development agencies with an overview of the key issues they need to address in preparing and implementing customs modernization initiatives. The audience for the Customs Modernization Handbook is customs officials who are called on to design and implement customs reform and modernization strategies, as well as staff members of the World Bank and of other multilateral and bilateral development agencies who support developing countries in implementing such strategies. All the case studies except for the one on Ghana were prepared using basically the same methodology, which aimed at identifying the origins of the reforms, the main drivers, and the outcomes. The Ghana case study is somewhat different, because it focuses on how the automation of trade and customs processes took the lead in the trade facilitation and customs reform. -
Publication
Agriculture and the WTO : Creating a Trading System for Development
(Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2004)This publication explores the key issues and options in agricultural trade liberalization from a developing country perspective. Chapters cover market access, domestic support, export competition, quota administration methods, food security, biotechnology, intellectual property rights, agricultural trade under the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA), and many other subjects, always focusing on the question of how the outcome of the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations can be made pro-development. 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. -
Publication
East Asia Integrates : A Trade Policy Agenda for Shared Growth
(Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2004)Rapid and sustained growth in international trade has long been a hallmark of successful growth and development strategies in East Asia. Some success stories are well known: those of the newly industrializing economies (NIEs) such as the Republic of Korea, as well as middle-income economies such as Malaysia and the transition economy of China. More recent entrants to world markets that have seen rapid export growth include low-income economies such as Cambodia and Vietnam. Trade has been an important factor in growth in the region, enabling progress in poverty reduction. Although the 1997-98 financial crisis interrupted this progress, recovery since then has brought poverty rates in every emerging economy in the region to record lows, and in economies like that of Vietnam, trade growth has brought with it a rapid reduction in poverty. Intraregional trade in East Asia has grown faster than trade with any other market, and while the largest economies account for the bulk of this trade, the regional trade of most smaller economies has also grown. Trade integration has been marketled, stemming from a combination of unilateral reforms, fulfillment of multilateral commitments, and a pattern of relocation of production processes (see Kawai and Urata 2002). Intraregional trade has been driven not only by growing demand but increasingly by improved competitiveness in regional markets, as reflected in increased market shares (Figure 1). China has been particularly dynamic, but almost all countries increased their competitiveness in regional markets during 1995-2001.9 This increase was accomplished without loss of competitiveness in other markets; East Asia continued to expand its market shares in the European Union (EU) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) markets in the same period. -
Publication
China and the WTO : Accession, Policy Reform, and Poverty Reduction Strategies
(Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2004)China's accession to the WTO requires a great many specific policy reforms. However, if the best results are to be obtained, it is important that these reforms be implemented as part of a consistent development program, rather than simply by treating them as a recipe. To do this, policy makers must understand the range and nature of the policy changes required by accession, their implications for the economy, and the availability and effects of supporting policies. "China and the WTO" analyzes the nature of the reforms involved in China's accession to the WTO, assesses their implications for the world economy, and examines the implications for individual households, particularly the poor. Its key objective is to provide the information that will allow policy makers to implement WTO commitments and formulate supporting policies to contribute strongly to economic development and poverty reduction. Individual chapters by leading scholars analyze the nature of the reforms in key areas, such as agriculture, services, intellectual property and safeguards and anti-dumping. These chapters form the building blocks for later chapters, which analyze the implications of reform for the economy. The book also includes a series of studies that assess the implications for households, taking into account the social safety net policies applying in China, and the impacts of complementary policies in areas such as labor market reform and investments in human capital. -
Publication
Poor People's Knowledge : Promoting Intellectual Property in Developing Countries
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003)This book aims to expand the international discourse by: Calling attention to a broader range of knowledge that has commercial potential in developing countries. Bringing an economic dimension into the discussion of traditional knowledge, where legal analysis has thus far been at the forefront. Bringing out the incentives for and concerns of poor people-which may be different from those of corporate research, Northern nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), or already successful entertainment stars. Demonstrating that the best answer is sometimes a commercial one, for example, providing musicians basic training in small business management or reform of regulations that burden small businesses, rather than obtaining formal patent or copyright protection. Calling attention to the many income-earning (rather than the income-using) dimensions of culture-to dispel the notion that culture and commerce are necessarily in opposition. Bringing out instances in which more or less standard legal approaches have been effective as an antidote to the general sense of conflict between traditional knowledge and normal legal conceptions so as to identify the problems in which legal innovation-beyond diligent application-is really needed. Imbuing into the discourse a sense of the legal and commercial tasks needed to solve a developmental problem-away from "knowledge" as an isolated legal issue. -
Publication
Domestic Regulation and Service Trade Liberalization
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003)International barriers to services trade are deeply intertwined with national regulatory, investment, and immigration policies. Accordingly, the liberalization of trade in services is considerably more complex that the liberalization of trade in goods. Sector-specific issues abound. This book sheds much light on the challenges facing the trading community in this area, through essays from a distinguished group of authors. Services liberalization has been, and will continue to be the engine of trade liberalization, if that outcome is to occur at all. The book provides one of the best guides to services trade, and all its technicalities, ups and downs, and the future of the world trade order. -
Publication
Moving People to Deliver Services
(Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003)The World Trade Organization (WTO) is today dealing with an issue that lies at the interface of two major challenges the world faces, trade liberalization and international migration. Greater freedom for the "temporary movement of individual service suppliers" is being negotiated under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Conditions in many developed economies - ranging from aging populations, to shortages of skilled labor - suggest that this may be a propitious time to put labor mobility, squarely on the negotiating agenda. Yet, there is limited awareness of how the GATS mechanism can be used to foster liberalization in this area of services trade. At the same time there is great concern, about the possible social disruption in host countries, and brain drain from poor countries. As a first step in improving our understanding of the implications of such liberalization, this volume brings together contributions from service providers, regulators, researchers and trade negotiators. They provide different perspectives on one central question: how is such liberalization best accomplished, in a way that benefits both home, and host countries? The result, combining insights from economics, law and politics, is bound to be a vital input into the WTO services negotiations, as well as the broader debate on the subject. -
Publication
India and the WTO
(Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003)India's trade policy establishment is perceived to be somewhat wary of multilateral engagement, even though India is implementing substantial economic, and trade policy reforms. Some essays in this well-researched volume may throw light on this paradox. More important, the essays take a hard look at India's interests, and concerns with respect to international trade. They suggest ways that India could deploy its domestic reform agenda in the Doha Round negotiations, to secure concessions from its trading partners, while using multilateral engagement to reinforce the domestic reform process, and enhance the process' credibility. The book should prove of considerable value to policymakers, market participants, and other stakeholders.