Person:
Brenton, Paul
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
INTERNATIONAL TRADE,
CLIMATE CHANGE,
CARBON ACCOUNTING,
TRADE POLICY
Degrees
External Links
Departments
Trade and Regional Integration
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Paul Brenton is Lead Economist in the Trade and Regional Integration Unit of the World Bank. He focuses on analytical and operation work on trade and regional integration. He has led the implementation of World Bank lending operations such as the Great Lakes Trade Facilitation Project in DR Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. He co-authored the joint World Bank-WTO report on The Role of Trade in Ending Poverty and has managed a range of policy-oriented volumes including: De-Fragmenting Africa: Deepening Regional Trade Integration in Goods and Services; Africa can Help Feed Africa; and Carbon Footprints and Food Systems: Do Current Accounting Methodologies Disadvantage Developing Countries? Paul joined the World Bank in 2002, having previously been Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Trade Policy Unit at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. Before that, he lectured in economics at the University of Birmingham in the UK. He has a PhD in Economics from the University of East Anglia. A collection of Paul’s work has been published in the volume International Trade, Distribution and Development: Empirical Studies of Trade Policies (https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/9172 ).
Publication Search Results
1 - 6 of 6
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Publication
Trade Costs, Export Development and Poverty in Rwanda
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-12)For Rwanda, one of the poorest countries in the world, trade offers the most effective route for substantial poverty reduction. But the poor in Rwanda, most of whom are subsistence farmers in rural areas, are currently disconnected from markets and commercial activities by extremely high transport costs and by severe constraints on their ability to shift out of subsistence farming. The constraints include lack of access to credit and lack of access to information on the skills and techniques required to produce commercial crops. The paper is based on information from the household survey and a recent diagnostic study of constraints to trade in Rwanda. It provides a number of indicative simulations that show the potential for substantial reductions in poverty from initiatives that reduce trade costs, enhance the quality of exportable goods, and facilitate movement out of subsistence into commercial activities. -
Publication
Food Prices, Access to Markets and Child Undernutrition in Ethiopia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-04)This paper looks at how changing food prices affect child undernutrition in Ethiopia. It derives height for age (stunting) and weight for height (wasting) as indicators of child undernutrition from the two most recent years of the Livings Standards Measurement Survey and utilizes market prices for key cereals, teff, wheat, and maize at the zone level across all regions of the country. Using a panel data fixed effects model, the analysis finds that, contrary to previous studies, rising crop prices are positively associated with improved child stunting rates for children between ages 6 months and 5 years, while the results for wasting are not conclusive. These results suggest that across the board policy interventions that seek to suppress cereal price increases may have adverse effects on poverty reduction in the long term by undermining potentially positive impacts on child nutrition. -
Publication
Horn of Africa Regional Economic Memorandum: Overview
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06-21)The objective of this Regional Economic Memorandum (REM) is to strengthen the economic analysis available to policymakers on the challenges and opportunities for regional economic integration to support job creation and economic transformation in the Horn of Africa. It assesses the current state of regional economic integration, how policies and investments can deepen this integration, and how this could help to address the opportunities and challenges confronting the region. The analysis applies both an economic geography perspective (based on the 3Ds framework of the 2009 WDR – density, distance, and division) and the lens of the jobs and economic transformation (JET) agenda, whilst taking into account fragility and conflict and the region’s complex and evolving political economy. This overview synthesizes the key findings of the analysis conducted for the HoA REM, full details of which are presented in a series of Background Papers. The overview briefly describes key aspects of the region’s economy and development progress (Section 2). Next, in Section 3, it presents features of the economic geography of the region and some key results from economic modeling and transport connectivity analysis. The findings demonstrate the salience of the JET agenda in the Horn, and this and its implications are discussed in Section 4. Finally, Section 5 concludes by highlighting the main policy messages which emerge from the REM’s regional-level analysis. -
Publication
A Review of Cross-Border Trade in the Horn of Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06-21)This paper provides a review of existing literature on cross-border trade among the Horn of African countries Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. It offers analysis on key traded products particularly food crops and livestock, a review on main trade routes and border marketing centers;the operation of cross-border value chains in the borderlands, including the economic impact on border communities and a summary of commonchallenges facing cross-border trade within the region. The review is augmented with analysis of available data on trade between these countriesfrom UN COMETRADE, FEWS NET and FAO.To put cross-border trade in context, the paper starts by reviewing the available information from officially recorded trade data. -
Publication
Cereal Prices and Child Undernutrition in Ethiopia
(Taylor and Francis, 2021-07-06)This paper looks at how changing cereal prices affect child undernutrition in Ethiopia. It derives height for age (stunting) and weight for height (wasting) as indicators of child undernutrition from the two most recent years of the Livings Standards Measurement Survey and utilizes market prices for key cereals, teff, wheat, and maize at the enumeration area across all regions of the country. Using a panel data fixed effects model, the analysis finds that, contrary to previous studies, rising cereal prices are positively associated with improved child stunting rates for children between ages 6 months and 5 years. There is no evidence to suggest that cereal prices have a significantly greater impact on height for age for children that come from households who are net sellers of these crops. Cereal prices do not appear to be associated with wasting, which is a shorter-term negative health outcome. -
Publication
Assessing the Direct Economic Effects of Reallocating Irrigation Water to Alternative Uses Concepts and an Application
( 2009-04-01)This study discusses potential economic implications for Nigeria of an Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union. It uses the World Bank s Tariff Reform Impact Simulation Tool to assess the effects of preferential tariff liberalization with respect to the European Union. The results suggest that the impact of an Economic Partnership Agreement on total imports into Nigeria will be slight. This is in part because the Agreement will likely allow the most protected sectors to be excluded from liberalization, and also because where substantial tariffs are involved much of the increase in imports from the European Union will occur at the expense of other suppliers of imports. It is this trade diversion, arising from the discriminatory nature of the EPA, which generates a negative welfare impact of the tariff reforms. One way for Nigeria to limit these losses is to pursue non-preferential trade liberalization before implementing an EPA. The paper looks at the large number of import bans in Nigeria and argues that the positive impact on welfare of removing these import bans is likely to be substantial. Their removal would undermine a major reason for cross border smuggling and pave the way for a return to normal regional trade flows. The paper shows how an Economic Partnership Agreement presents an opportunity for accelerating the reforms that are needed to support a strategy to increase regional and global trade integration. Such an agreement is more likely to have positive and significant impacts when integrated into a comprehensive strategy toward competitiveness and alleviation of the supply constraints that have stifled the impact of previous trade agreements. Key issues that should be addressed include liberalization and regulatory strengthening of services sectors to ensure that all firms in Nigeria have access to efficiently produced backbone services and initiatives to address the country s poor trade logistics performance.