Publication: Trading for Results: Realizing the Promise of Doha
Loading...
Published
2005-10-12
ISSN
Date
2016-08-11
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank, complimented the impressive work of agencies like the Japan International Cooperation Agency and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. Japan is a big player everywhere in the world. The World Bank depends heavily on Japanese financial markets for borrowing. Today, Japan is a major market for developing countries and a major source of development assistance. Developing countries will need assistance to help their entrepreneurs take advantage of new trade opportunities. A swift and meaningful conclusion to the Doha round is essential if the Bank is to win the fight against poverty, disease, and hunger.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Wolfowitz, Paul. 2005. Trading for Results: Realizing the Promise of Doha. Remarks at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan, October 12, 2005;. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24880 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Russian Trade and Foreign Direct Investment Policy at the Crossroads(2010-03-01)This paper summarizes the estimates of what Russia will get from World Trade Organization accession and why. A key finding is the estimate that Russia will gain about $53 billion per year in the medium term from World Trade Organization accession and $177 billion per year in the long term, due largely to its own commitments to reform its own business services sectors. The paper summarizes the principal reform commitments that Russia has undertaken as part of its World Trade Organization accession negotiations, and compares them with those of other countries that have acceded to the World Trade Organization. It finds that the Russian commitments represent a liberal offer to the members of the World Trade Organization for admission, but they are typical of other transition countries that have acceded to the World Trade Organization. The authors discuss the outstanding issues in the Russian World Trade Organizaiton accession negotiations, and explain why Russian accession will result in the elimination of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment against Russia. They discuss Russian policies to attract foreign direct investment, including an assessment of the impact of the 2008 law on strategic sectors and the increased role of the state in the economy. Finally, the authors assess the importance of Russian accession to Russia and to the international trading community, and suggestions for most efficiently meeting the government s diversification objective.Publication India and the Multilateral Trading System after Seattle : Toward a Proactive Role(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000-06)The authors argue that India should engage more actively in the multilateral trading system for four reasons: First, such engagement could facilitate domestic reform, and improve access to export markets. If the government could show that domestic reform would pay off with increased access to markets abroad, those who gain from such access - whether they export textiles, software, professional services, or other products - could represent a countervailing voice to reform's opponents. In turn, the need for this external payoff to secure domestic reform makes India a credible bargainer, which could induce trading partners, to open their markets to India. Second, external commitments can foster good domestic policies, by providing guarantees against the reversal of current policies, or lending credibility to promises of future reform. Such pre-commitments could help strike a balance between the reluctance to unleash competition immediately, and the desire not to be held perpetual hostage to vested interests, or weak domestic industries. Third, engagement can help enforce India's market access rights. If other countries do not eliminate quotas on textiles, and clothing as scheduled, India can credibly threaten to withdraw its obligations under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). Fourth, multilateral tariff reduction could reduce the disadvantage (to India) of not being part of regional agreements. The value of multilateral engagement might be limited, if the prospects for securing increased market access are dim, as the failed Seattle negotiations might appear to suggest. India must credibly test negotiating pessimism by showing its willingness to open its markets in return for improved access to foreign markets. Success is not certain, but India's chances are improved if aligns itself with countries pressing for sound policies of open trade.Publication Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Australia and New Zealand(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-09)In 1990, Australia and New Zealand were ranked around 25th and 37th in terms of Gross National Product (GNP) per capita, having been the highest-income countries in the world one hundred years earlier. Those countries relatively poor economic growth performance over that long period contrasts markedly with that of the past 15 years, when these two economies out-performed most other high-income countries. This difference in growth performance is due to major economic policy reforms during the past two to three decades, both at and behind the border. The report provide new evidence on the extent of governmental distortions to agricultural incentives in particular in the Australian and New Zealand economies since the late 1940s, both directly due to agricultural policies per se and indirectly (and negatively) through protection to manufacturing.Publication Economic Partnership Agreements and the Export Competitiveness of Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-05)Trade can be a key driver of growth for African countries, as it has been for those countries, particularly in East Asia, that have experienced high and sustained rates of growth. Economic partnership agreements with the European Union could be instrumental in a competitiveness framework, but to do so they would have to be designed carefully in a way that supports integration into the global economy and is consistent with national development strategies. Interim agreements have focused on reciprocal tariff removal and less restrictive rules of origin. To be fully effective, economic partnership agreements will have to address constraints to regional integration, including both tariff and non-tariff barriers; improve trade facilitation; and define appropriate most favored nation services liberalization. At the same time, African countries will need to reduce external tariff peak barriers on a most favored nation basis to ensure that when preferences for the European Union are implemented after transitional periods, they do not lead to substantial losses from trade diversion. This entails an ambitious agenda of policy reform that must be backed up by development assistance in the form of "aid for trade."Publication Reforming Agricultural Trade for Developing Countries : Volume 1. Key Issues for a Pro-Development Outcome of the Doha Round(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007)Reforming agricultural trade for developing countries is a two-volume set. The first volume is subtitled Key issues for a pro- development outcome of the Doha Round, and it is focused on specific concerns that are being encountered in the agricultural negotiations, and on strategies for dealing with them to arrive at a final agreement that will significantly spur growth and reduce poverty in developing countries. The companion volume is subtitled Quantifying the impact of multilateral trade reform. It comprises chapters that take different approaches to modeling trade reform and quantifying the resulting benefits and costs to various players in the negotiations. The study explains the differences in results that come out of these different approaches, and compares them to some other recent estimates of the gains from global trade reform.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication World Development Report 2023: Migrants, Refugees, and Societies(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2023-04-25)Migration is a development challenge. About 184 million people—2.3 percent of the world’s population—live outside of their country of nationality. Almost half of them are in low- and middle-income countries. But what lies ahead? As the world struggles to cope with global economic imbalances, diverging demographic trends, and climate change, migration will become a necessity in the decades to come for countries at all levels of income. If managed well, migration can be a force for prosperity and can help achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. World Development Report 2023 proposes an innovative approach to maximize the development impacts of cross-border movements on both destination and origin countries and on migrants and refugees themselves. The framework it offers, drawn from labor economics and international law, rests on a “Match and Motive Matrix” that focuses on two factors: how closely migrants’ skills and attributes match the needs of destination countries and what motives underlie their movements. This approach enables policy makers to distinguish between different types of movements and to design migration policies for each. International cooperation will be critical to the effective management of migration.Publication Water Matters(Washington, DC, 2022)Water security is a matter of increasing concern across the world and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is no exception. With rapidly growing demands for water and increasing variability due to climate change, ensuring water access to all users and mitigating water-related risks should be at the center of national and regional adaptation strategies. With nearly a third of the world's water resources, the LAC region's development has been inadvertently driven by water. This rich water endowment has allowed LAC to position itself as the world's largest net food-exporting region and greenest in terms of electricity production through hydropower. Water has played a fundamental role in reducing poverty, preserving LAC's natural wealth, and accelerating economic growth. More importantly, access to safe drinking water and sanitation services has contributed to improve the health and living conditions of millions of people. Despite this progress, there are urgent water sector challenges that threaten the region's sustainable development. Access to water and sanitation services is inequitable, with greater gaps in rural, indigenous, and peri-urban communities. In addition, water-related extremes such as floods and droughts are becoming more frequent and severe, having negative effects in lower-income communities. These gaps are more likely to be broadened by unsustainable water management practices, growing demands by competing water users, increasing pollution, and climate change impacts. In LAC, inadequate infrastructure results in a lack of storage and limited investment reduces the capacity of institutions to achieve integrated water resources management and improve service provision. The Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) conducts research, convenes multi stakeholder dialogues, builds institutional capacity, and provides policy advice to water decision-makers. Focused on improving water governance, the authors aim to contribute to more prosperous and inclusive societies.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)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.Publication How Shanghai Does It(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016-04-04)The Shanghai basic education system has garnered significant attention since its extraordinary performance in the 2009 and 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a global assessment of 15-year-olds’ educational abilities. Among the 65 participating economies in 2012, Shanghai-China ranked first on all three major domains of PISA, i.e. mathematics, reading, and science. Shanghai also stands out for having the world’s highest percentage of “resilient students”, students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds who emerge as top performers. Shanghai’s PISA story has generated intense discussions and diverse speculations in field of international educational development, and numerous studies have been done in the attempt to unravel the mystery. Missing from the picture however is a more comprehensive, systematic, in-depth, and objective rendition of the policies and practices of Shanghai basic education, benchmarked against others in key dimensions. This report presents an in-depth examination of how Shanghai scored highest in the areas of reading, science, and mathematics on PISA. It documents and benchmarks key policies in basic Shanghai education, provides evidence on the extent to which these policies have been implemented in schools, and explores how these policies have affected learning outcomes. The report uses PISA 2012 data to analyze Shanghai student achievement variation and to examine the extent school variables may be associated with the variation beyond family and student background. It also uses the World Bank’s Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER), an existing systems diagnostic and benchmarking tool, as an organizing framework and for data collection. School-based surveys and other existing research shed further light on educational impact and implementation. While the report attempts to adopt a systems approach, particular emphasis is placed on teachers, education financing, balancing autonomy and accountability, and student assessment.Publication From Isolation to Integration(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-03-01)The World Bank Group's Horn of Africa Regional Initiative promotes resilience and economic opportunity in one of the world’s most challenging regions for security and development. Within the region, extreme poverty, vulnerability, fragility, and food insecurity are disproportionately concentrated in the arid and remote border regions. But despite its challenges, there are areas in the borderlands with real economic potential. For example, the region's international borders have long allowed communities to benefit from price differentials through licit and illicit trade (Scott-Villiers 2015). Pastoralism and trade, the dominant livelihoods in the Horn of Africa, require the easy movement of people and goods within and across borders—and continue to heavily rely on cross-country clan and ethnic affiliations. Local institutions therefore still play a key role in regulating and facilitating economic activity and managing conflict, especially as the formal institutions are often weak or absent. Even in areas at the periphery of state control, the borderlands remain highly connected to circuits of global capital and exchange.