Person:
Martin, William John

Agricultural and Rural Development Unit, Development Research Group, The World Bank

Fields of Specialization

Agricultural economics; agricultural trade; poverty; food prices; WTO

ORCID

0000-0002-2824-1303

External Links

EconPapers
Google Scholar

Departments

Agricultural and Rural Development Unit, Development Research Group, The World Bank

Last updated January 31, 2023

Biography

Will Martin is Manager for Agricultural and Rural Development in the World Bank’s Research Group and President-Elect of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. His recent research has focused primarily on the impacts of changes in food and trade policies and food prices on poverty and food security in developing countries. His research has also examined the impact of major trade policy reforms—including the Uruguay Round; the Doha Development Agenda; and China’s accession to the WTO—on developing countries; implications of climate change for poor people; and implications of improvements in agricultural productivity in developing countries. He trained in economics and agricultural economics at the University of Queensland, the Australian National University and Iowa State University and worked at the Australian Bureau of Agricultural Economics and the Australian National University before joining the World Bank in 1991.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 80

Formulas and Flexibility in Trade Negotiations : Sensitive Agricultural Products in the World Trade Organization's Doha Agenda

(World Bank, 2011-03-30) Jean, Sébastien ; Laborde, David ; Martin, Will

Many trade negotiations involve large cuts in high tariffs, while allowing smaller cuts for an agreed share of politically sensitive products. The effects of these flexibilities on market access opportunities are difficult to predict, creating particular problems for developing countries in assessing whether to support a proposed trade agreement. Some widely used ad hoc approaches for identifying likely sensitive products—such as the highest-bound-tariff rule—suggest that the impact of a limited number of such exceptions on average tariffs and market access is likely to be minor. Applying a rigorous specification based on the apparent objectives of policymakers in setting the prenegotiation tariff enables more accurate assessment of the implications of sensitive-product provisions for average agricultural tariffs, economic welfare, and market access under the Doha negotiations. The analysis concludes that highest-tariff rules are likely to seriously underestimate the impacts on average tariffs and that treating even 2 percent of tariff lines as sensitive is likely to have a sharply adverse impact on economic welfare. The impacts on market access are also adverse, but much smaller, perhaps reflecting the mercantilist focus of the negotiating process.
Free Trade Area Membership as a Stepping Stone to Development : The Case of ASEAN

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2001-02) Fukase, Emiko ; Martin, Will

This study investigates the economic impacts of accession to the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) by the new member countries of Cambodia, the Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Vietnam. The trade policies of these countries are examined, and a series of quantitative analyses were undertaken to evaluate the impacts of accession. The results showed that the static impacts of reducing tariffs against ASEAN members are beneficial, although the magnitude of the net gains is diminished by the trade diversion resulting from the discriminatory nature of the reforms. The binding commitments on protection rates under the AFTA plan provide an important initial step to more broader and more beneficial trade reforms. The study focuses on some of the key country-specific policy challenges associated with trade liberalization--such as declining tariff revenues in Cambodia, and the negative impacts on sensitive domestic industries in Vietnam. The study recommends that accession to AFTA be viewed as an important transitional step in the broader process of trade reform and institutional development needed for successful development and poverty alleviation.
Food Price Spikes, Price Insulation, and Poverty

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-07) Anderson, Kym ; Ivanic, Maros ; Martin, Will

This paper has two purposes. It first considers the impact on world food prices of the changes in restrictions on trade in staple foods during the 2008 world food price crisis. Those changes -- reductions in import protection or increases in export restraints -- were meant to partially insulate domestic markets from the spike in international prices. The authors find that this insulation added substantially to the spike in international prices for rice, wheat, maize, and oilseeds. As a result, although domestic prices rose less than they would have without insulation in some developing countries, in many other countries they rose more than they would have in the absence of such insulation. The paper's second purpose it to estimate the combined impact of such insulating behavior on poverty in various developing countries and globally. The analysis finds that the actual poverty-reducing impact of insulation is much less than its apparent impact, and that its net effect was to increase global poverty in 2008 by 8 million people, although this increase was not significantly different from zero. Since there are domestic policy instruments, such as conditional cash transfers, that could now provide social protection for the poor far more efficiently and equitably than variations in border restrictions, the authors suggest it is time to seek a multilateral agreement to desist from changing restrictions on trade when international food prices spike.
Doha Merchandise Trade Reform : What is at Stake for Developing Countries?

(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-05-01) Anderson, Kym ; Martin, Will ; van der Mensbrugghe, Dominique

This article: a) summarizes the costs of current merchandise trade distortions to developing and other economies; b) examines some scenarios that might emerge as part of an eventual Doha agreement consistent with the 2005 Hong Kong Ministerial declaration, particularly with respect to agriculture; and c) draws implications for the strategies developing countries might adopt in the World Trade Organization's (WTO's) Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations. This article estimates what the world economy might look like in 2015 without and with a successful conclusion to the Doha round, how far Doha could take the world toward an outcome with no distortions in merchandise trade, and what contribution various elements of a Doha package could make.
China's Accession to the World Trade Organization, Policy Reform, and Poverty Reduction : An Introduction

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004-01) Bhattasali, Deepak ; Shantong, Li ; Martin, Will

China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) was a watershed event for both China and the WTO. After 30 years of effective isolation from the world economy, and close to a quarter century of autonomous reforms, China joined the legal framework of the world trading system. In doing so China made an extraordinarily wide-ranging set of commitments to reform of its own legal and administrative system and to thorough-going liberalization of trade in goods and services. This issue contains five studies from a major project undertaken by the World Bank and the Development Research Centre of China's State Council. A key objective of the studies was to assess the impact of the reforms associated with WTO accession on poverty in China, particularly in rural areas, which now lag so badly behind urban areas.
Developing Countries and a New Round of WTO Negotiations

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2002-01) Hertel, Thomas W. ; Hoekman, Bernard M. ; Martin, Will

This article summarizes some of the results and findings emerging from an ongoing World Bank a research and capacity-building project that focuses on the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiating agenda from a developing country perspective. Recent research suggests that the potential gains from further multilateral liberalization of trade remain very large. The payoffs associated with attempts to introduce substantive disciplines in the WTO on domestic regulatory regimes are much less certain. This suggests that the focus of current and future negotiations should be primarily on the bread and butter of the multilateral trading system-the progressive liberalization of barriers to trade in goods and services on a nondiscriminatory basis. In addition, priority should be given to ensuring that rules are consistent with the development needs of poorer countries and to helping developing countries implement WTO obligations.
Developing Countries' Changing Participation in World Trade

(World Bank, 2003) Martin, Will

Recent year have seen substantial reductions in trade policy and other barriers inhibiting developing country participation in world trade. Lower barriers have contributed to a dramatic shift in the pattern of developing country trade-away from dependence on commodity exports to much greater reliance on manufacture and services. In addition, exports to other developing countries have become much more important. These changes have profound implications for the role played by developing countered in the world economy and trade system.
China and the WTO : Accession, Policy Reform, and Poverty Reduction Strategies

(Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2004) Bhattasali, Deepak ; Li, Shantong ; Martin, Will ; Bhattasali, Deepak ; Li, Shantong ; Martin, Will

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.
Impacts of China's Accession to the World Trade Organization

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004-01) Ianchovichina, Elena ; Martin, Will

This article presents estimates of the impact of China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). China is estimated to be the biggest beneficiary (US$31 billion a year from trade reforms in preparation for accession and additional gains of $10 billion a year from reforms after accession), followed by its major trading partners that also undertake liberalization, including the economies in North America, Western Europe, and Taiwan (China). Accession will boost manufacturing sectors in China, especially textiles and apparel, which will benefit directly from the removal of export quotas. Developing economies competing with China in third markets may suffer small losses. Accession will have important distributional consequences for China, with the wages of skilled and unskilled nonfarm workers rising in real terms and relative to those of farm workers. Possible policy changes, including reductions in barriers to labor mobility and improvements in rural education, could more than offset these negative impacts and facilitate the development of China's economy.
Trade Policy Reform in the East Asian Transition Economies

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2001-01) Martin, Will

The performance of the East Asian transition economies in export and income growth has been strikingly better than that of countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The East Asian economies have achieved remarkably high growth rates in outputs and exports without the often large declines in output and exports observed in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. East Asian reformers have successfully made many of the parallel changes needed in both domestic and trade policies to secure export and income growth. (It makes no sense, for example, to introduce the trade policy instruments of a market economy when the domestic economy is still based on central planning.) But there has been no single magic formula for their success. The author discusses what each of the economies (Cambodia, China, Lao People's Democratic Republic, and Vietnam) has done. China experienced an extended transition process; the transition ws much shorter in other East Asian transition economies--especially Cambodia. Several of the East Asian transition economies used accession to a regional arrangement as part of their reform strategy. China focused mainly on unilateral reforms and, more recently, reforms associated with its accession to the World Trade Organization. Most have made extensive use of policies to attract foreign investment and to mitigate the burden of protection on manufacturing exporters. Most of the remaining trade policy problems, although difficult, appear to be problems more of development than of transition.