Trade and Development
37 items available
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The Trade and Development Series seeks to provide objective, accessible information about the new trade agenda. Titles in the series cover a wide range of topics, from regional trade agreements and customs reform to agriculture, intellectual property rights, services, and other key issues currently being discussed in World Trade Organization negotiations. Contributors to the series represent some of the world’s leading thinkers and specialists on international trade issues. Titles in this series undergo internal and external review under the management of the Trade Group's Advisory Board in the World Bank's Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network.
Items in this collection
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Publication
Deep Trade Agreements: Anchoring Global Value Chains in Latin America and the Caribbean
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-07-12)International economic integration offers unexploited opportunities to Latin America and the Caribbean. This report studies how the region’s countries can leverage trade agreements to promote their economies’ participation in global value chains (GVCs).The gaps between potential and actual GVC integration follow from the region’s Economic fundamentals, such as geography, market size, institutions, and factor endowments. But policy choices matter as well. The report, based on new data and evidence, shows that trade agreements can drive policy reforms and help the region overcome some of its disadvantageous fundamentals. The report makes specific policy recommendations to guide Latin American and Caribbean countries in leveraging trade agreements to pursue greater international integration and economic growth. Four main findings emerge from the analysis: (i) Latin America and the Caribbean’s poor international integration and limited participation in GVCs have contributed to its low economic growth over the past decade; (ii) Although the region’s countries increasingly participate in preferential trade agreements (PTAs), there are gaps in the content of these agreements; (iii) Deep trade agreements present an avenue to promote trade and boost GVC integration and upgrading, thus contributing to improved economic performance; (iv) Four areas of deep integration - trade facilitation, regulatory cooperation, services, and state support - are priorities to improve these countries’ GVC participation and upgrading. -
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Trade Therapy: Deepening Cooperation to Strengthen Pandemic Defenses
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022)The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the upsides and downsides of international trade in medical goods and services. Open trade can increase access to medical services and goods (and the critical inputs needed to manufacture them), improve quality and variety, and reduce costs. But excessive concentration of production, restrictive trade policies, supply chain disruptions, and regulatory divergence can jeopardize the ability of public health systems to respond to pandemics and other health crises. This report, coordinated by Nadia Rocha and Michele Ruta at the World Bank and Marc Bacchetta and Joscelyn Magdeleine at the WTO, provides new data on trade in medical goods and services and medical value chains; surveys the evolving policy landscape before and during the pandemic; and proposes an action plan to improve trade policies and deepen international cooperation to deal with future pandemics. -
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Effects of a Deeper Central European Free Trade Agreement
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018-03-01)This paper studies the economic effects of ‘deepening’ the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA). It combines new information on the content of trade agreements with gravity model estimates of the impact of deep trade agreements, agreements that go beyond the elimination of tariffs and other border restrictions. The analysis suggests that CEFTA is a relatively shallow trade agreement as it covers mostly policy areas under the current WTO mandate. The estimated trade impacts of CEFTA on member countries are relatively modest, varying between 0.02 and 7.4 percent. CEFTA’s members would gain from simultaneously deepening their integration reciprocally and vis-a-vis the EU. In particular, a trade agreement with the EU similar to the EU-Norway agreement could increase total exports by CEFTA members between 4 and 27 percent. -
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Trade Competitiveness Diagnostic Toolkit
(World Bank, 2012)This Trade Competitiveness Diagnostic (TCD) toolkit provides a framework, guidelines, and practical tools needed to conduct an analysis of trade competitiveness. The toolkit can be used to assess the competitiveness of a country's overall basket of exports, as well as specific traded sectors. It includes guidance on a range of tools and indicators that can be used to analyze trade performance in terms of growth, orientation, diversification, quality, and survival, as well as quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyze the market and supply-side factors that determine competitiveness. The toolkit facilitates the identification of the main constraints to improved trade competitiveness and the policy responses to overcome these constraints. The output of a TCD initiative can be used for a wide variety of purposes. The TCD toolkit is intended for policy makers and practitioners involved in analysis of trade performance and design of trade and industrial policy. -
Publication
Exporting Services : A Developing Country Perspective
(World Bank, 2012)The book builds on previous research, including that by the World Bank, on trade in services. Such research includes analyses of the effect of liberalizing services in developing countries and sectoral studies on financial, transportation, telecommunication, and professional services, as well as on international negotiations. The conceptual framework for this book is based on the existing literature on the service sector (Francois and Hoekman 2010; Hoekman and Mattoo 2008). Recognizing the heterogeneity in both, economic structure of developing countries and their service exports, this book takes an eclectic approach to identifying successful strategies. Chapter two surveys the literature on determinants of service exports and presents an illustrative empirical model that synthesizes the available models on trade in services. Because trade data on services are scarce and have a number of weaknesses, rigorous econometric analysis has serious limits. The subsequent chapters of the book examine the determinants of trade in services through case studies of the experiences of countries with varying degrees of success. The book analyzes service export performance for the following countries: Brazil, Chile, the Arab Republic of Egypt, India, Kenya, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The countries were selected on the basis of their performance in global trade (especially trade in services), their regional role, and the availability of data and because they have consciously pursued policies to promote service exports. -
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Trade Finance during the Great Trade Collapse
(World Bank, 2011-06-22)The bursting of the subprime mortgage market in the United States in 2008 and the ensuing global financial crisis were associated with a rapid decline in global trade. The extent of the trade collapse was unprecedented: trade flows fell at a faster rate than had been observed even in the early years of the great depression. G-20 leaders held their first crisis-related summit in November 2008. The goal was to understand the root causes of the global crisis and to reach consensus on actions to address its immediate effects. In the case of trade, a key question concerned the extent to which a drying up of trade finance caused the observed decline in trade flows. This book brings together a range of projects and studies undertaken by development institutions, export credit agencies, private bankers, and academics to shed light on the role of trade finance in the 2008-09 great trade collapse. It provides policy makers, analysts, and other interested parties with analyses and assessments of the role of governments and institutions in restoring trade finance markets. A deeper understanding of the complexity of trade finance remains critical as the world economy recovers and the supply of trade finance improves. The international community continues to know too little about the fragility of low income economies in response to trade finance developments and shocks, as well as about the ability and conditions of access to trade finance by small and medium enterprises and small banks in developing countries. Similarly, there is uncertainty regarding the impact on trade finance of recent changes in the third Basel regulatory framework. -
Publication
Managing Openness : Trade and Outward-oriented Growth After the Crisis
(World Bank, 2011-03-22)The global financial crisis is stimulating a broad reassessment of economic integration policies in developed and developing countries alike. The crisis was associated with a great trade collapse, the sharpest in recorded history and the deepest since Second World War (Baldwin 2009). The trade collapse affected all countries and products, although to different extents. While signs of recovery are starting to solidify, deeper questioning of the causes of the crisis and the merits of globalization has surfaced. The emergence of China and the imbalances of its trade with the United States are shaking the stability of the global system. Are these imbalances sustainable, or do they need to be adjusted to avoid another global crisis? What impact will these adjustments have on the trade of developing countries if they mean that China consumes more and the United States saves more? Openness has helped support growth in many countries, to unprecedented levels in Brazil, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and others. Yet today many are concerned that openness is creating vulnerability, and vulnerability can hurt growth. No one believes that inward orientation is the solution or that domestic consumption alone can boost growth, even in large countries. The longer-term benefits of openness more than compensate for the short-term negative impacts of trade shocks. The question is not whether to remain open but rather what kind of safety and insurance systems, at the micro and macro levels, to put in place to better hedge against shocks from globalization. As developing countries try to find answers to these questions, they also face a drastically changed trade environment. The crisis proved that protectionism is no longer the name of the game; it remained largely under control thanks to a solid multilateral regime as well as to a new system of production sharing across countries, which does not lend itself naturally to broad-based protectionism. Moreover, the role of South-South trade is growing, giving developing countries new opportunities to export and new opportunities to import cheaper capital goods, now produced in countries like China or India, that allow them to industrialize faster. Thus, while outward-oriented growth is here to stay, it needs to be put in a different perspective and packaged with additional policies. As the world emerges from the crisis, the author expect to see the development of an 'export-led growth version 2.0' model that reflects these new dynamics. -
Publication
Preferential Trade Agreement Policies for Development : A Handbook
(World Bank, 2011)Regional integration is increasingly recognized as a key avenue for promoting economic growth and reducing poverty. Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have become a central instrument of regional integration in all parts of the world. Beyond market access and the progressive elimination of barriers at the border, PTAs are increasingly being used to address a host of behind-the-border issues, also known as 'deep integration' issues, in order to promote cooperation in the areas of investment, trade facilitation, competition policy, and government procurement, as well as wider social issues related to the regulation of the environment and the protection of labor and human rights. The purpose of this handbook is to explore the various ways in which policy makers and trade negotiators in the developing world can limit the costs and maximize the benefits of their regional integration efforts. PTAs have become a cornerstone of the international trade system. The surge in their number and scope is fast reshaping the architecture of the world trading system and the trading environment of developing countries. The integration of these diverse agreements into a multilateral framework that facilitates the expansion of trade is likely to be one of the main challenges facing the world trading system in the coming years. This handbook offers an introduction to the complex world of modern PTAs. It follows in the steps of earlier, seminal World Bank publications on the economics and practice of PTAs, notably new dimensions in regional integration, trade blocs, and regional integration and development. Supplementing these earlier publications, this volume aims at taking its audience beyond the traditional market access paradigm to consider more broadly and systematically the numerous regulatory policy dimensions that are contained in modern PTAs. In particular, it offers a framework for understanding a number of behind-the-border policies typically covered in PTAs, including labor mobility, investment, trade facilitation, competition, and government procurement, as well as other societal and more normative policies related to intellectual property, environment, labor rights, and human rights. These latter are increasingly among the policies driven by powerful trading blocs as they strive to influence developing countries and the evolution of the global trading system. The handbook is also inspired by the numerous requests received by the World Bank from developing countries or groups of developing countries worldwide for advice on PTAs, including those currently being negotiated, as an aid in understanding the obligations and the possible economic and development implications of various provisions. -
Publication
Agricultural Price Distortions, Inequality, and Poverty
(World Bank, 2010)For decades, the earnings from farming in many developing countries have been depressed because of a pro-urban, anti-agricultural bias in own-country policies and because governments in more well off countries are favoring their farmers by imposing import barriers and providing subsidies. These policies have reduced national and global economic welfare, inhibited economic growth, and added to inequality and poverty because no less than three-quarters of the billion poorest people in the world have been dependent directly or indirectly on farming for their livelihoods (World Bank 2007). The purpose of the rest of this chapter is to outline the analytical framework and the common empirical methodology adopted in the global and national case studies reported in subsequent chapters, to summarize and compare the modeling results from the global and national models, and to draw some general policy implications. The findings are based on three chapters (part two) that each use a global model to examine the effects of farm and nonfarm price and trade policies on global poverty and the distribution of poverty within and across many of the countries identified, plus ten individual developing-country studies (parts three-five) spanning the three key regions: Asia (where nearly two-thirds of the world's poor live), Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. -
Publication
International Trade in Services : New Trends and Opportunities for Developing Countries
(World Bank, 2010)International trade in services also provides an assessment of how policy makers can further bolster their service industries by leveraging the changes prompted by technological advancements. The book provides policy recommendations that include the reduction of barriers to services trade across all sectors and the promotion of health- and environment-related development policies that should be promoted in parallel with a burgeoning services market. The first recommendation is considered the most important, because it focuses on the need to ensure trade openness, which helps ensure the access to services and promotes the quality of services provision through foreign and domestic competition. Moreover, the issue of temporary movement of labor is another focus of this book, given that it is one of the most important means of service exports for developing countries. This is an issue that is considered technically complex and politically sensitive because of its political and security implications. The book examines mechanisms that have been used by various countries to liberalize the temporary movement of persons and concludes that regardless of the negotiating forum- multilateral, regional, or bilateral-the policy making results on temporary movement of labor are, so far, modest and limited to a small range of categories. However, it proposes alternative ways to move forward that require further analysis by countries and relevant international organizations, including the World Bank.