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 - 2 of 2
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Publication
Watching More Than the Discovery Channel : Export Cycles and Diversification in Development
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-08)This paper examines the export performance of 99 countries over 1995-2004 to understand the relative roles of export growth through "discovery" of new products and growth during post-discovery phases of the export product cycle -- acceleration and maturation -- in existing markets and expansion into new geographic markets. The authors find that expanding existing products in existing markets (growth at the intensive margin) has greater weight in export growth than diversification into new products and new geographic markets (growth at the extensive margin). Moreover, growth into new geographic markets appears to be more important than discovery of new export products in explaining export growth. Of particular importance is whether an exporting country succeeds in reaching more national markets that are already importing the product it makes. This geographic index of market penetration is a powerful explanatory variable of export performance. This suggests that governments should not focus solely or even primarily on the discovery channel, but also seek to identify and address market failures that are constraining exporters in subsequent phases of the export cycle. -
Publication
Pathways to African Export Sustainability
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012-07-02)This report provides tentative leads toward such policy prescriptions, based on an overview of the empirical evidence. Chapter one sets the stage by putting Africa's export-survival performance into perspective and proposing a framework that will guide the interpretation of empirical evidence throughout the report. Chapter two covers country-level determinants of export sustainability at origin and destination, including the exporting country's business environment. Chapter three explores some of the firm-level evidence on what drives export sustainability, including uncertainty, incomplete contracts, learning, and networks. Finally, chapter four offers tentative policy implications. The main conclusions from this overview of the causes of Africa's low export sustainability should be taken with caution both because of the complexity of the issue and because of the very fragmentary evidence on which the overview is based. The author should be more cautious in drawing policy implications, as hasty policy prescriptions are the most common trap into which reports of this kind can fall. A first, solid conclusion is that the author needs substantial additional work on the nature and causes of low export survival rates in developing countries to determine the path to high export sustainability.