Person: Brenton, Paul
Trade and Regional Integration
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INTERNATIONAL TRADE, CLIMATE CHANGE, CARBON ACCOUNTING, TRADE POLICY
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Trade and Regional Integration
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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 ).
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Publication Women and Trade in Africa : Realizing the Potential(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01) Gamberoni, Elisa; Brenton, Paul; Sear, Catherine; Brenton, Paul; Gamberoni, Elisa; Sear, CatherineRegional trade in Africa can play a vital role in diversifying economies and reducing dependence on the export of a few mineral products, in delivering food and energy security, in generating jobs for the increasing numbers of young people, and in alleviating poverty and promoting a shared prosperity. Women play a key role in trade in Africa and will be essential to Africa's success in exploiting its trade potential. In many countries in Africa, the majority of small farmers are women, and they produce crops such as maize, cassava, cotton, and rice that have enormous potential for increased trade between African countries and with the global market. Women are also involved in providing services across borders, such as education, health, and professional services, including accountancy and legal services. Hundreds of thousands of women cross borders in Africa every day to deliver goods from areas where they are relatively cheap to areas in which they are in shorter supply. Yet, policy makers typically overlook women's contribution to trade and the challenges they face. This volume brings together a series of chapters that look at the ways that women participate in trade in Africa, the constraints they face, and the impact of those constraints. It seeks to extend the rather small amount of analytical work that has been devoted to this issue and to encourage researchers, especially in Africa, to look more carefully at the specific challenges women face. The chapters look at the conditions and challenges faced by three broad groups: informal cross border traders; women who participate in the production of traded goods and services, ranging from rural farmers of cotton to professional activities such as legal and accountancy services; and women entrepreneurs with dominant ownership of exporting companies. The book highlights the importance of identifying and removing the conditions that prevent women from exploiting the full potential of trading activities. This report is organized as follows: chapter one gives introduction; chapter two presents barriers, risks, and productive potential for small-scale traders in the Great lakes region; chapter three focuses on unshackling women traders: cross-border trade of Eru from Cameroon to Nigeria; chapter four focuses on women cross-border traders, challenges, and behavior change communications; chapter five gives the gender dimension of Uganda's cotton sector; chapter six focuses on services trade and gender; chapter seven focuses on gender in the tourism industry: the case of Kenya; chapter eight presents shape up and ship out?: gender constraints to growth and exporting in South Africa; and chapter nine presents trade and gender in Tanzania: what matters-participation or outcomes?.Publication Trade Costs, Export Development and Poverty in Rwanda(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-12) Diop, Ndiame; Brenton, Paul; Asarkaya, YakupFor 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 Export Diversification in Africa: The Importance of Good Trade Logistics(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-06-15) Huria, Ankur; Brenton, PaulEconomic activity in many African countries remains highly concentrated and exports are often dominated by mineral resources or a few primary products. The World Bank’s 2011 report on light manufacturing in Africa identified poor trade logistics performance as a constraint that especially penalized African exporters that relied on imported inputs, very often making them uncompetitive. The report highlighted research that demonstrated how poor logistics added roughly a 10 percent production cost penalty in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zambia across the five subsectors of light manufacturing where opportunities were identified as greatest in Africa. The report outlined how in Africa poor trade logistics increase production costs (often wiping out the labor cost advantage) and lead to long and unreliable delivery times, making local firm’s unattractive suppliers to lead firms in global value chains (GVCs), particularly for light manufacturing. This note seeks to contribute to a review of progress in achieving export diversification through greater exports of light manufacturing products. It looks at recent trends in the exports of the five categories of light manufacturing identified as having strong potential in Africa. The note reviews progress in improving trade logistics in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on the three countries highlighted in the light manufacturing study: Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zambia, and additionally Kenya and Uganda.Publication The Initial and Potential Impact of Preferential Access to the U.S. Market under the African Growth and Opportunity Act(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-04) Ikezuki, Takako; Brenton, PaulThe ability to export clothing products under preferences with liberal rules of origin is the key factor currently determining whether the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) has a significant impact on non-oil exporting African countries. At present only a small number of countries receive substantial benefits and least developed countries that do not receive preferences for clothing have yet to see an impact of AGOA on their overall exports. However, the benefits from exporting clothing under AGOA appear fragile in the face of the removal of quotas in the United States on major suppliers, such as China, at the end of 2004, and the planned removal of the liberal rules of origin that allow for the global sourcing of fabrics from least-cost locations. To entrench and enhance the benefits of AGOA, it is important that the scheme be extended over a much longer period, if not made permanent, and the special liberal rules of origin for clothing products be extended considerably beyond 2004. The effective inclusion of textile products and a number of high-duty agricultural products would also help to broaden the range of opportunities for African exporters in the U.S. market. Nevertheless it is important that the opportunities created by AGOA are integrated into a broader framework for promoting trade and that it be recognized that if the opportunities offered by more open trade are to be exploited, there must be concerted efforts to improve the environment for investment countries covered by AGOA.Publication Pathways to African Export Sustainability(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012-07-02) Cadot, Olivier; Brenton, Paul; Pierola, Martha DenisseThis 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.Publication Assessing the Direct Economic Effects of Reallocating Irrigation Water to Alternative Uses Concepts and an Application(2009-04-01) Andriamananjara, Soamiely; Brenton, Paul; von Uexkull, Jan Erik; Walkenhorst, PeterThis 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.