Publication: The Challenge of Reducing International Trade and Migration Barriers
Date
2008-04
ISSN
Published
2008-04
Author(s)
Abstract
While barriers to trade in most goods
and some services including capital flows have been reduced
considerably over the past two decades, many remain. Such
policies harm most the economies imposing them, but the
worst of the merchandise barriers (in agriculture and
textiles) are particularly harmful to the world's
poorest people, as are barriers to worker migration across
borders. This paper focuses on how costly those anti-poor
trade policies are, and examines possible strategies to
reduce remaining distortions. Two opportunities in
particular are addressed: completing the Doha Development
Agenda process at the World Trade Organization (WTO), and
freeing up the international movement of workers. A review
of the economic benefits and adjustment costs associated
with these opportunities provides the foundation to
undertake benefit/cost analysis required to rank this set of
opportunities against those aimed at addressing the
world's other key challenges as part of the Copenhagen
Consensus project. The paper concludes with key caveats and
suggests that taking up these opportunities could generate
huge social benefit/cost ratios that are considerably higher
than the direct economic ones quantified in this study, even
without factoring in their contribution to alleviating
several of the other challenges identified by that project,
including malnutrition, disease, poor education and air pollution.
Citation
“Anderson, Kym; Winters, L. Alan. 2008. The Challenge of Reducing International Trade and Migration Barriers. Policy Research Working Paper No. 4598. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/9f6f76d0-16bc-5135-88a2-04f017349a95 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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