Publication:
Regional, Multilateral, and Unilateral Trade Policies on MERCOSUR for Growth and Poverty Reduction in Brazil

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (92.8 MB)
449 downloads
English Text (253.58 KB)
1,045 downloads
Published
2003-05
ISSN
Date
2014-05-05
Editor(s)
Abstract
The authors estimate that the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), the EU-MERCOSUR agreement, and multilateral trade policy changes will all be beneficial for Brazil. The Brazilian government strategy of simultaneously negotiating the FTAA and the EU-MERCOSUR agreement, while supporting multilateral liberalization through the Doha Agenda, will increase the benefits of each of these policies. The authors estimate that the poorest households typically gain roughly three to four times the average for Brazil from any of the policies considerethe United States protects its most highly protected markets. Both the FTAA and the EU-MERCOSUR agreements are net trade-creating for the countries involved, but excluded countries almost always lose from the agreements. The authors estimate that multilateral trade liberalization of 50 percent in tariffs and export subsidies results in gains to the world more than four times greater than either the FTAA or the EU-MERCOSUR agreement. This shows the continued importance to the world trading community of the multilateral negotiations.
Link to Data Set
Citation
Harrison, Glenn W.; Rutherford, Thomas F.; Tarr, David; Gurgel, Angelo. 2003. Regional, Multilateral, and Unilateral Trade Policies on MERCOSUR for Growth and Poverty Reduction in Brazil. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 3051. © http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18186 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
  • Publication
    Climate and Social Sustainability in Fragility, Conflict, and Violence Contexts
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07) Cuesta Leiva, Jose Antonio; Huff, Connor
    Climate change is widely recognized as a driver of violent conflict, but its broader social effects remain less understood. Ignoring these dimensions risks a vicious cycle where climate policies might undermine socially just adaptation. Evidence is still limited on how climate shocks influence political participation, trust, or migration. This paper helps fill that gap by examining links between climate change, conflict, and social sustainability, with a focus on inclusion, resilience, cohesion, and legitimacy. Using secondary data from 2019–24, the study applies simple correlation-based methods to test three hypotheses on the nature, severity, and composition of these associations. The analysis combines multiple climate impact measures, new conflict classifications, recent social sustainability frameworks, and controls for population and geography. The results reveal strong correlations—not causation—between climate events and contexts of fragility, conflict, and violence. Climate impacts are most pronounced in both national and subnational conflict settings. The study also finds robust links between fragility, conflict, and violence and low levels of social sustainability, reflecting its role as both a driver and consequence of conflict. Some dimensions—such as violent events and insecurity—appear weaker in areas most affected by climate shocks. Two of the hypotheses are supported, and one remains inconclusive.
  • Publication
    The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29) Abalo, Kodzovi; Boehlert, Brent; Bui, Thanh; Burns, Andrew; Castillo, Diego; Chewpreecha, Unnada; Haider, Alexander; Hallegatte, Stephane; Jooste, Charl; McIsaac, Florent; Ruberl, Heather; Smet, Kim; Strzepek, Ken
    Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.
  • Publication
    Institutional Capacity for Policy Implementation: An Analytical Framework
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07) Kim, Galileu; Kumar, Tanu; Ramalho, Rita; Russell, Stuart
    State capacity is an important prerequisite for policy implementation, yet at the country level it is difficult to measure, assess, and reform. This paper proposes a focus on institutional capacity: the ability of public institutions to implement the specific policy mandates for which they are responsible. Based on a review of existing literature, the paper defines the different dimensions that compose institutional capacity and groups them into two cross-cutting categories: organizational dimensions (personnel, financial resources, information systems, and management practices) and governance dimensions (transparency, independence, and accountability). The paper proposes measures for organizational and governance dimensions using existing data, shows intra-institutional variation of these measures within countries, and discusses how new data could be collected for better measurement of these concepts. Finally, the paper illustrates how the framework can be used to diagnose the sources of common problems related to weak policy implementation.
  • Publication
    South Africa’s Fragmented Cities: The Unequal Burden of Labor Market Frictions
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-08) Baez, Javier E.; Kshirsagar, Varun
    Using high-resolution administrative, census, and satellite data, this paper shows that South African cities are characterized by spatial mismatches between where people live and where jobs are located, relative to 20 global peers. Areas within 5 kilometers of commercial centers have 9,300 fewer residents per square kilometer than expected, which is 60 percent below the global median. Poor, dense neighborhoods are most affected. In Johannesburg, a 10-percentile increase in distance from the nearest business hub corresponds to a 3.7-percentile drop in asset wealth (a proxy of household wellbeing) and 4.9-percentile drop in employment. In Cape Town, the declines are 4.0 and 3.7 percentiles, respectively. Employment is 87 percent lower in the poorest decile than the richest in Johannesburg and 61 percent lower in Cape Town. These findings suggest that South Africa’s spatial organization of people and economic activity constrains agglomeration and reinforces inequality. This methodology provides a scalable and standardized data-driven framework to analyze spatial accessibility and agglomeration frictions in complex, data-constrained urban systems.
  • Publication
    Investment in Emerging and Developing Economies
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07) Adarov, Amat; Kose, M. Ayhan; Vorisek, Dana
    The world faces a pressing challenge to meet key development objectives amid slowing growth and rising macroeconomic and geopolitical risks. With the number of job seekers rising rapidly, infrastructure shortfalls continuing to be large, and climate costs mounting, the case for a significant investment push has never been stronger. Yet the capacity to respond in many emerging markets and developing economies has eroded. Since the global financial crisis, investment growth has slowed to about half its pace in the 2000s, with both public and private investment weakening. Foreign direct investment inflows—a critical source of capital, technology, and managerial know-how—have also fallen sharply and become increasingly concentrated, leaving low-income countries with only a marginal share. The risks of further retrenchment are significant, as trade tensions, policy uncertainty, and elevated debt levels continue to weigh on investment. Reigniting momentum will require ambitious domestic reforms to strengthen institutions, rebuild macro-fiscal stability, and deepen trade and investment integration—the foundations of a supportive business climate. At the same time, international cooperation is indispensable. A renewed commitment to a predictable system of cross-border trade and investment flows, combined with scaled-up financial support and sustained technical assistance, is essential to help emerging markets and developing economies—especially low-income countries and economies in fragile and conflict situations—bridge financing gaps and implement the domestic reforms needed to restore investment as an engine of growth, jobs, and development.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    Services Liberalization in Preferential Trade Arrangements : The Case of Kenya
    (2011-01-01) Balistreri, Edward J.; Tarr, David G.
    Given the growing importance of commitments to foreign investors in services in regional trade agreements, it is important to develop applied general equilibrium models to assess the impacts of liberalization of barriers to multinational service providers. This paper develops a 55 sector applied general equilibrium model of Kenya with foreign direct investment and Dixit-Stiglitz productivity effects from additional varieties of imperfectly competitive goods or services, and uses the model to assess its regional and multilateral trade options, focusing on commitments to foreign investors in services. To assess the sensitivity of the results to parameter values, the model is executed 30,000 times, and results are reported as confidence intervals of the sample distributions. The analysis reveals that a 50 percent preferential reduction in the ad valorem equivalents of barriers in all business services by Kenya with its African partners would be somewhat beneficial for Kenya. If a preferential agreement with African partners is combined with an agreement with the European Union, the gains would more than triple the gains of an Africa only agreement. Multilateral reduction of services barriers, however, would yield gains about 12 times the gains of an agreement with the Africa region alone. These results suggest that preferential liberalization in the region is a valuable first step, but wider liberalization, with larger partners and liberal rules of origin or multilaterally, will yield much larger gains due to providing access to a much wider set of services providers. The largest gains would come from domestic regulatory reform in services, as this would almost triple the gains of multilateral liberalization.
  • Publication
    Determinants of Trade Policy Responses to the 2008 Financial Crisis
    (2011-10-01) Gawande, Kishore; Hoekman, Bernard; Cui, Yue
    The collapse in trade and contraction of output that occurred during 2008-09 was comparable to, and in many countries more severe than, the Great Depression of 1930, but did not give rise to the rampant protectionism that followed the Great Crash. Theory suggests several hypotheses for why it was not in the interest of many firms to lobby for protection, including much greater macroeconomic "policy space" today, the rise of intra-industry trade (specialization in specific varieties), and the fragmentation of production across global value chains ("vertical" specialization and the associated growth of trade in intermediates). Institutions may also have played a role in limiting the extent of protectionist responses. World Trade Organization disciplines raise the cost of using trade policies for member countries and have proved to be a stable foundation for the open multilateral trading system that has been built over the last fifty years. This paper empirically examines the power of these and other theories to explain the observed pattern of trade policy responses to the 2008 crisis, using trade and protection data for seven large emerging market countries that have a history of active use of trade policy. Vertical specialization (global fragmentation) is found to be the most powerful economic factor determining trade policy responses.
  • Publication
    Rules of Thumb for Evaluating Preferential Trading Arrangements : Evidence from Computable General Equilibrium Assessments
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-10) Harrison, Glenn W.; Rutherford, Thomas F.; Tarr, David G.
    Most interesting results on the welfare effects of regional arrangements are ambiguous at a theoretical level. Many questions only have quantitative answers that are specific to the particular structural features of the economy and the policy considered. So, to determine the impact of prospective regional arrangements governments often rely on a quantitative evaluation. Usually at the request of client governments of the World Bank, the authors have implemented many computable general equilibrium (CGE) models to inform policymakers. The authors summarize the main conclusions drawn from these studies. The principal conclusions are: 1) Countries excluded from a preferential trade arrangement almost always lose. 2) Market access is a key determinant of the net benefits of a preferential trade arrangement. 3) With a free trade agreement (FTA) the external tariff can be lowered such that a poor FTA becomes attractive. 4) For Southern countries, North-South agreements offer a beneficial increase in competition in their home markets, and involve little increase in the supply price of Northern country sales in Southern countries. 5) Multilateral trade liberalization results in significantly larger gains to the world than the network of regional arrangements. 6) For individual countries without high protection, "additive regionalism" will likely result in substantially larger gains than unilateral trade liberalization. 7) Tax replacement requirements reduce the set of desirable regional arrangements. 8) Trade taxes are often an inefficient source of tax revenue. 9) Trade liberalization should be expected to be pro-poor in developing countries, but results will be diverse at the household level so safety nets are important. 10) Dynamic effects to reverse conclusions regarding regionalism are not expected.
  • Publication
    Deep Trade Policy Options for Armenia : The Importance of Services, Trade Facilitation and Standards Liberalization
    (2011-05-01) Jensen, Jesper; Tarr, David G.
    This paper develops an innovative 21 sector computable general equilibrium model of Armenia to assess the impact on Armenia of a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the European Union, as well as further regional or multilateral trade policy commitments. The analysis finds that such an agreement with the European Union will likely result in substantial gains to Armenia, but shows that the gains derive from the deep aspects of the agreement. In order of importance, the sources of the gains are: (i) trade facilitation and reduction in border costs; (ii) services liberalization; and (iii) standards harmonization. A shallow agreement with the European Union that focuses only on preferential tariff liberalization in goods will likely lead to small losses to Armenia primarily due to a loss of productivity from lost varieties of technologies from the rest of the world region in manufactured products. Additional gains can be expected in the long run from an improvement in the investment climate. The authors estimate only small gains from a services agreement with countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, but significant gains from expanding services liberalization multilaterally.
  • Publication
    Introduction and summary to the Handbook of Trade Policy and WTO Accession for Development in Russia and the CIS
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-10) Tarr, David; Navaretti, Giorgio Barba
    This paper is the introduction and summary chapter of the 43 chapter volume entitled Handbook of Trade Policy and WTO Accession for Development in Russia and the CIS. The key policy conclusions of each of the chapters are highlighted in this paper. The Handbook will be published only in Russian in 2005, but an English language version of the majority of the papers described here is available on the website www.worldbank.org/trade/russia-wto. This paper first explains the potential importance of World Trade Organization (WTO) accession as a development tool, and discusses the recent successful development models and the role of trade policy in their development. The paper then summarizes the three parts of the Handbook. The first part treats trade policy (with applications to Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States [CIS]). The second part treats World Trade Organization institutions and disciplines, again with Russia and CIS applications. And the third part focuses on various aspects of the impact of WTO accession on Russia. The numerous papers that relate trade policy and WTO accession to experience in Russia and the CIS are likely to be of special interest to native English speakers, since these papers are new to the literature. The papers in the Handbook are intended to be non-technical materials accessible to a wide policy audience. The Handbook forms the basis of a World Bank Institute course on trade policy and WTO accession, which has been delivered and will be delivered again on multiple occasions.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    Integration of Markets vs. Integration by Agreements
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-03) Aminian, Nathalie; Fung, K.C.; Ng, Francis
    This paper provides an analysis of the two channels of regional integration: integration via markets and integration via agreements. Given that East Asia and Latin America are two fertile regions where both forms of integrations have taken place, the authors examine the experiences of these two areas. There are four related results. First, East Asia had been integrating via markets long before formal agreements were in vogue in the region. Latin America, by contrast, has primarily used formal regional trade treaties as the main channel of integration. Second, despite the relative lack of formal regional trade treaties until recently, East Asia is more integrated among itself than Latin America. Third, from a purely economic and trade standpoint, the proper sequence of integrations seems to be first integrating via markets and subsequently via formal regional trade agreements. Fourth, regional trade agreements often serve multiple constituents. The reason why integrating via markets first can be helpful is because this can give stronger political bargaining power to the outward-looking economic-oriented forces within the country.
  • Publication
    Trade Effects of Industrial Policies
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-17) Barattieri, Alessandro; Mattoo, Aaditya; Taglioni, Daria
    This paper explores the effects of industrial policy on trade, focusing on the role of preferential trade agreements. The analysis uses data for the period 2012–2022 on detailed product-level bilateral trade, industrial policy announcements, and rules on subsidies in different preferential trade agreements. The introduction of a new industrial policy measure in a destination market reduces export growth to that market on average by about 0.28 percent. However, exports from fellow members of preferential trade agreements are not adversely affected and may even be positively affected if the agreements have deep disciplines on subsidies. These findings suggest that preferential trade agreements have a shielding effect against the trade distorting effects of industrial policies.
  • Publication
    Handbook of Deep Trade Agreements
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020-07-08) Rocha, Nadia; Ruta, Michele; Mattoo, Aaditya; Mattoo, Aaditya; Rocha, Nadia; Ruta, Michele
    Deep trade agreements (DTAs) cover not just trade but additional policy areas, such as the international flows of investment and labor, and the protection of intellectual property rights and the environment. Their goal is integration beyond trade, or deep integration. DTA rules influence how countries transact, invest, work, and, ultimately, develop. The rules and commitments in DTAs should be informed by evidence and shaped by development priorities rather than international power or domestic politics. An impediment to this goal is that data and analysis on trade agreements have not captured the new dimensions of integration. Little effort has been made to identify the content and consequences of DTAs. This Handbook takes a step towards filling this gap in our understanding of international economic law and policy. It presents detailed data and analysis on the content of the policy areas most frequently covered in DTAs, focusing on the stated objectives, substantive commitments, and other aspects such as transparency, procedures, and enforcement. Each chapter, authored by lead experts in their respective fields, explains in detail the methodology used to collect the information and provides a first look at the evidence by policy area.
  • Publication
    GVC Participation and Deep Integration in Brazil
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-11) Rocha, Nadia; Hollweg, Claire H.
    The production of export goods has become increasingly unbundled, and countries positioning to become more integrated in the global economy are increasingly looking toward global value chains. This paper uses the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/World Trade Organization's Trade in Value Added Database to assess Brazil's current integration in global value chains. It uses a structural gravity model estimated with parts and components to analyze the scope for Brazil to increase global value chain–related trade. One avenue to raise participation in global value chains is through (deeper) preferential trade agreements, and to this end the paper characterizes the level of integration of Brazil's current preferential trade agreements. Brazil has witnessed high growth in total domestic value added embodied in gross exports since 1995, yet it exhibits lower international engagement in global value chains, but tends to be stronger as a seller than a buyer. Most of the participation on the selling side comes from indirect linkages with domestic input sectors, and services sectors have been important for growing the indirect value added in global value chain–oriented exports. A deep integration agenda focusing not only on border measures, but also on beyond-the-border measures, would help Brazil to maximize the benefits from participation in global value chains. Other than its natural partners, Brazil should integrate with countries where global value chains are taking place. New agreements signed by Brazil and Mercosur with other regional members such as the Pacific Alliance should also take into consideration provisions such as investment, competition policy, and intellectual property rights, which are demonstrated to be very important for integration in global value chains.
  • Publication
    Digital Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13) Begazo, Tania; Dutz, Mark Andrew; Blimpo, Moussa
    All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.