Blog
From the Editor's Desk (January 2012)Tony Addison January saw the snow arrive in Helsinki. As I look out across the harbour, the scene is one of various shades of white and grey. The...
Tony Addison January saw the snow arrive in Helsinki. As I look out across the harbour, the scene is one of various shades of white and grey. The...
Tony Addison With our temperatures now well above zero, we head for the official end of the Finnish winter on 1st May (the ‘Vappu’ holiday). As...
Jyrki Ali-Yrkkö, Petri Rouvinen, Timo Seppälä, Pekka Ylä-Anttila Available statistics biases the true picture of the current stage of globalization...
Tony Addison A visit to Buenos Aires in September provided a good vantage point to look at the euro zone’s deepening crisis. Angle readers will recall...
India’s policy responses to the food price crisis were strong. Exports of basic staples were banned. Domestic support prices of wheat and rice were raised substantially. The urea price increases in global markets were absorbed through enhanced...
Tony Addison As autumn moves into winter in Helsinki, it is time to bring you the October edition of UNU-WIDER’s newsletter, WIDER Angle. Regular...
Tony Addison As we come to the end of November, the snow has yet to arrive in Helsinki. We continue to enjoy clear skies and spectacular sunsets...
16 December 2014 John Page On 20 November 2014 the United Nations celebrated the 25th Africa Industrialization Day. But perhaps ‘celebrate’ is not...
23 April 2014 Justin Yifu Lin and Yan Wang At the onset of its miraculous rise in 1979, China had been trapped in poverty for centuries and was poorer...
Alisa DiCaprio The global arms trade is a lucrative business. In 2010, total arms transfers were estimated at US$40 billion. Despite the global...
GUESTAngle John Langmore and Perrin Wilkins When delivering the eighth WIDER Annual Lecture on rethinking growth strategies in 2004 Dani Rodrik...
24 June 2013 Minister Gunilla Carlson Like every political agenda, the post-2015 agenda must be firmly based in a reality check. The current...
The project centers on the inter-linkages between the major developing countries of Brazil, India, China and South Africa and the global economy, with a special emphasis on the implications of China's growth on smaller economies and the rest of the...
When the Uruguay Round was being negotiated and it was coming to a close, a number of estimates were made about the impact of the agreement on poor countries. Many of the assessments indicated that there would be a net loss for them while others came...
Globalization offers new opportunities for accelerating development and poverty reduction, but also poses new challenges for policymakers. And there is much concern about the distribution of benefits; in particular whether the poor gain from...
There has been considerable media coverage of China’s trade and financial activities, on India’s emergence as a technology and innovation hub, and on the commerce and investment interactions between China, India, Brazil, and South Africa and other...
This Focus is devoted to small islands' development challenges, specifically relating to the achievement of economic growth, and draws on five papers arising from the UNU-WIDER 'Fragility and Development' research project meeting held in Fiji in...
In this special issue, five articles address some of the challenges associated with integrating an existing S-S regional agreement with a new template that results from block negotiations with a northern partner. The compatibility issues this raises...
Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) between the European Union (EU) and trade partners go far beyond mere elimination of tariffs to include such diverse issues as non-tariff barriers, competition legislation, investment protection, and more. Implementing...
In the last decade, a large portion of capital goods imports of Sub-Saharan African countries is telecommunications equipment, and China is now the main source of equipment for 30 Sub-Saharan African countries. A connection between specific types of...
The success of Africa's exports, as well as its spatial development, depends on lowering transport costs. In this Policy Brief, we address a number of pertinent questions on transport costs in Africa, such as 'what are transport costs?', 'do...
The transfer from an import-substitution to an export-orientation strategy has been in effect in Vietnam since the reform process, Doi Moi, necessitating the reformulation of macroeconomic, trading and sectoral policies. As a result, the industry...
The current paper demonstrates a dichotomy of the growth response to changes in the barter terms of trade, employing as case studies the two African countries, Botswana and Nigeria. Using distributed-lag analysis, the paper finds that the effect of...
Political motives, geography, and the uneven distribution of gains trumped the traditional efficiency gains across Africa’s Regional Economic Communities (RECs). The small, sparsely populated, fragmented, and often isolated economies across Africa...
New challenges and emerging paradigms have turned industrialization and industrial policy into one of the most hotly debated and interesting issues of the early twenty-first century. Both the role of manufacturing in economic development and the...
This paper examines the relationship between trade (exports), growth, and inequality, using a panel of 100 countries over 30 years (1980 to 2010). As there is no clear theoretical relationship between trade (exports) and inequality, and as inequality...
Ethiopia represents an excellent case study of recent industrial policy experimentation in Africa. The country is well known for its successful promotion of the cut-flower industry through business-government co-ordination. What is less known is that...
In this paper I empirically investigate the early international entrepreneurship of indigenous Chinese firms using data on 3,948 firms surveyed by the World Bank in 2002-03. I find important differences in the extent and motivation of early...
Tanzania’s industrial sector has evolved through various stages since independence in 1961, from nascent and undiversified to state-led import substitution industrialization, and subsequently to de-industrialization under the structural adjustment...
One feature of exporting firms in Cambodia is that they are not of domestic origin but are foreign firms that export from the moment they are established in Cambodia. In this paper we examine the extent to which the presence of foreign-owned export...
By Imed Drine Whilst having a global impact, the current financial and economic crisis is clearly affecting certain regions more severely than others...
Wim Naudé Following the US subprime mortgage crisis of 2007-2008, the world is now staggering from financial to economic crisis as many high-income...
We investigate the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of domestic Vietnamese firms and their engagement with foreign markets. We develop a measure of CSR that combines compliance with labour standards, management...
Senegal is a typical sub-Saharan economy, which conducted an import substitution policy over 1960-86, followed by a policy of support for the private sector and liberalization of the economy. It suffers from a low level of economic development...
African countries have sought to replicate the success of East Asia by implementing special economic zones. Despite decades of international experience, there remains no blueprint for successful special economic zone policies, and the majority of...
A substantially higher rate of growth of exports is crucial to ensure success of the major outward-oriented, 'market friendly' economic reforms being pursued in India and Sri Lanka. The international economic and trade environment, however, is far...
The emerging trends in global trading patterns point to the increasing role and significance of regional economic cooperation in promoting the process of growth and development. The formation of the South-Asian Association for Regional Cooperation...
Vietnam has been among the most successful East Asian economies, especially in weathering the external shocks of recent globalization crises. Examination of economic performance and policy responses shows rising dependence on foreign finance around...
The six studies, selected from those contributed to the research project entitled The Integration of the New Market Economies of Europe and Asia into the World Economy: the Changing Internal and External Factors and Global Implications, open with...
In this paper I estimate a non-traditional export performance equation for a panel of 60 developing countries. As an input to the export model, I also estimate a panel regression model of the real exchange rate (RER) for the same countries. The RER...
To halt the deterioration of their national economy most African governments embarked on IMF and World Bank supported Structural Adjustment Programmes. These programmes have been criticised as neglecting social costs and promoting export-led growth...
Over the last thirty-five years, Costa Rican exports (in dollars) have grown at an average annual growth rate of 10.8 per cent. In the context of an import substituting industrialization and subregional integration, exports grew at increasingly...
This paper considers the rationale for and limitations to selective export promotion policies in developing countries, with a focus on manufactured exports. It draws upon the experience of the most successful exporters in the developing world - the...
1. La communauté internationale doit mettre au point des methodes permettant de soutenir la croissance japonaise afin d'attenuer les effets de l'essoufflement americain et d'enrayer toute amorce de deflation mondiale.2. Alors que certaines des...
This paper addresses informal cross-border trade in the Horn of Africa, with an emphasis on the Somalia borderlands. It will be shown that despite the collapse of a government in 1991, Somalia’s unofficial exports of cattle to Kenya have grown...
Agricultural development can contribute significantly to peace by raising incomes and employment, thereby reducing the social frustrations that give rise to violence. Agricultural growth also generates revenues for governments, allowing them to...
This paper investigates the impact labour regulation, as defined by labour standards, have on the international trade regime. After providing a description of the debate's landscape, the paper focuses on the questions: Could the adoption of a...
The most often used form of contingent protection is the anti-dumping (AD) mechanism. In 1999 the number of AD cases initiated accounted for 86.32 per cent of the total of three main types of contingent protection measures used; countervailing duty...
This paper reviews main S&D provisions for developing countries under the GATT-WTO trading system and discusses issues relating to the future of S&D treatment from the perspective of the least-developed countries (LDCs). It argues that negotiations...
This paper examines whether protectionist tendencies, in terms of both policy preferences and policy actions, in 'Northern' countries-looking in particular at the United States - seem to be an obstacle to the integration into the world economy of...
The object of this paper is to analyse the evolution of the international trading system from its inception as GATT in 1947 to its latest incarnation as WTO, comprising the complex array of agreements forming its substance and mandate. The study...
The paper identifies and examines those factors that have affected growth in the CFA franc zone countries relative to the non CFA countries. It examines the special arrangements between franc zone countries and France, which give some advantages that...
In this paper we provide an analytical account of the mechanisms through which globalization, in the sense of increased foreign trade and long-term capital flows, affects the lives of the rural poor in developing countries (in their capacity as...
There has been much debate about how much poor people in developing countries gain from trade openness, as one aspect of ‘globalization’. The paper views the issue through both ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ empirical lenses. The macro lens uses cross-country...
Livelihoods of the rural poor in developing countries are critically dependent on the health of the local ecosystems. In this paper we examine the various mechanisms through which globalization can lead to ecosystem degradation, and consequently...
A book review Book review on 'Protection for exporters: power and discrimination in transatlantic trade relations, 1930-2010' by Andreas Duer Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010.
This paper investigates the economic consequences of a scenario in which the European Union (EU) imposes economic sanctions on Sudan. The idea of the paper is motivated by the deteriorating relations between Sudan and the EU arising from the...
This paper investigates the importance of transport costs in new venture internationalisation, i.e. of firms that start exporting before they are 3 years of age. It does so by merging two large international datasets, on the firm level (covering 49...
Several types of transitions are operating in global forestry in the late twentieth century. These include the forest-management transition and the forest-area transition, as well as shifts in forest perceptions and forestry paradigms. A trend...
Since the mid-1970s, Chile's exports have expanded at a fast rate, and the export basket has diversified considerably, away from copper towards other primary commodities and commodity-intensive manufactures. This paper explores the causal factors and...
This paper considers the role and modus operandi of the National Coffee Federation of Colombia. Much respected and much criticized over time, today its role is being challenged as inappropriate to the new commitment to a free market economy. The...
The partial effect of nominal exchange rate volatility on exports from each EMU member to the rest of the EMU is estimated on annual data for 1967-97, using modern time-series methods. The long-run relations between exchange rate volatility and...
The purpose of this paper is to explore economic and political implications of Europe's Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) for developing countries. In strictly economic terms, influences will be communicated through both trade and financial channels...
This paper surveys issues related to globalization, and the obstacles to the successful integration of vulnerable economies. For many developing countries, the positive benefits of the increased globalization that has been taking place since around...
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been praised as an important development tool, especially for countries at low levels of industrial development...
We analyse the business cycles in China and in selected OECD countries between 1992 and 2006. We show that, although negative correlation dominates for nearly all countries, we can also see large differences for various frequencies of cyclical...
We study whether misinvoicing in international trade is reflected in cross-border bank accounts as reported by offshore financial centres. We show that residents hold more offshore wealth when local misinvoicing practices thrive, especially for under...
This paper examines how trade sanctions affect the allocation of workers across formal and informal employment. We analyse the case of the unexpected and unprecedented trade sanctions imposed on Iran in 2012. We use a difference-in-differences...
Service exports are the fastest growing portion of world trade and now account for nearly a quarter of global exports. Tradable services contribute to economic growth and development by bolstering industrial capabilities, facilitating productivity...
The rise of the emerging southern economies – China, India, Brazil, and South Africa (CIBS) – as both economic and political actors, is having significant and far-reaching impact on the world economy. Notwithstanding the increasing amount of study...
By exploring the export performances and specialization patterns of China and India, we assess their trade competitiveness and complementarity vis-à-vis each other as well as with the rest of the world. Our analysis indicates that (i) India faces...
Illicit financial flows have recently attracted the attention of academia, practitioners, and multilateral organizations who consider them harmful to economic development. Some observers suggest that many of these flows occur via the misinvoicing of...
China’s engagement in the so-called international fragmentation of production – namely ‘cross-border dispersion of component production/assembly within vertically integrated manufacturing industries’ – has become an increasingly important form of its...
by Oliver Morrissey I had the privilege of being interviewed by the Finnish TV news agency when I was in Helsinki for the World Institute for...
by Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis During successive rounds of the GATT and, since 1995, the WTO regime, the world community has been trying to move towards...
by Martin Ravallion There has been much debate about how much poor people in developing countries gain from trade openness, as one aspect of...
This paper investigates the impact of foreign aid on economic growth in member countries of the Economic Community of West African States using panel data for 1990-2009 and a three equation simultaneous-equations model. The effect of foreign aid on...
This chapter revisits the link between exchange rate regimes and trade in the context of Africa’s exchange rate arrangements. Applying an augmented gravity model that includes measures of currency unions and pegged regimes, the paper compares Africa...
The telecommunications sector in Africa presents many exciting prospects to international investors—indeed many billion dollar projects are already underway across the continent. Many of the continent’s current problems can be traced to the...
This study revisits the effect of aid on the quality of institutions and examines the effects of a major source of instability, namely terms-of-trade instability, on the quality of democracy. We take advantage of previous empirical findings which...
This paper investigates some of the existing hypotheses regarding the transmission of different colonial legacies to modern day economic growth. The fact that different colonial strategies were pursued by different colonizers in various territories...
The objective of this paper is to estimate transformation and Armington substitution elasticities for South African trade. We use linear methods to estimate elasticities without growth factors. We then employ a non-linear system of equations to...
Over the years EU aid has been much discussed—and criticized. Besides the accusations of being old fashioned, slow and bureaucratic there is also the complexity of a close neighbourship with the EU’s foreign policy in general, trade and the eternal...
One of the strengths of the new UNU-WIDER and Brookings book Made in Africa is that, in the best sense of the word, its proposals are debatable. It...
This paper describes the results of initial work analysing a panel of rural households in Peru between 1994 and 2004 to determine household responses to changes in relative prices of traditional versus export-oriented products. Our principal interest...
This paper reassesses the gains from trade for sub-Saharan Africa, and draws their implications for labour market adjustment and poverty reduction. It reviews previous studies on multilateral liberalization, focusing on the findings from computable...
The feeble results of liberalization policies in Latin America are explained in terms of a multiple steady state model including a dynamic human development trap, endogenous technological change, technology transfer and trade. Divergent and...
South Africa’s transition to democracy in 1994 created new possibilities for economic policy. Economic liberalization brought sustained, if unspectacular, growth that reversed the long decline in per capita incomes, but left its scars in much job...
Alisa DiCaprio This is Part 1 of a 2-part analysis of the upcoming WTO 8th Ministerial Conference in December 2011. Part 2 will appear in the November...
Integration of Latin America into the international economy over the past quarter century has led to faster export growth, but not to faster GDP or productivity growth Contrary to mainstream analysis, under the current market reforms countries have...
Part II: Engagement with Developing Countries. This is Part 2 of a 2-part analysis of the upcoming WTO 8th Ministerial Conference in December 2011...
Part of Book Wider Perspectives on Global Development
Part of Book Wider Perspectives on Global Development
Conflicts over the management of forest resources are examined, comparing situations in India, Finland and the USA. The examples illustrate how the interrelationships between people and their environment differ depending on the knowledge systems of...
With the dramatic changes in the global political scene, many developing countries are re-evaluating their economic and political priorities. This reappraisal scrutinizes their dependence on specific commodities and the crisis into which this market...
The EU's decision to replace unilateral Lomé preferences with Article XXIV-compliant reciprocal agreements remains a subject of ongoing debate in trade circles. The major issue stems from the inequality of bilateral negotiations between the world's...
In this thought-provoking lecture, Professor Bhagwati presents us quite a different perspective on globalization than what we get in the polarized debates in the media between its proponents and opponents. He first argues that the different...
Jeffrey Williamson is renowned as both an exemplary teacher and an outstanding scholar of economic history. His work has covered—and continues to cover—a wide range of historical and contemporary topics, including growth, trade, migration, living...
The Lecture addresses one of the core issues in development: how can low income countries achieve faster rates of economic growth? Reviewing the lessons to be drawn from recent history, particularly with regard to Latin America and Asia, Rodrik...
The lecture will explore the theoretical and empirical links between international trade and economic development over a wide range of space and time, drawing on models and ideas based on his previous work and that of others. Special attention will...
This book brings together papers written by representatives from UN agencies and academics who take a fresh look at the expanding role of transnational corporations and foreign direct investment in the world economy. These papers deal with such...
Part of Book National Perspectives on the New Regionalism in the South
Part of Book Non-Traditional Export Promotion in Africa
Part of Book Globalization, Marginalization and Development
Part of Book Globalization, Marginalization and Development
Part of Book Globalization, Marginalization and Development
Part of Book Perspectives on Growth and Poverty
The volume contains original essays by authors who have worked together to derive lessons for African export prospects from the experiences of some of the more successful developing countries in East Asia and Latin America. They present up-to-date...
Much has been written about EMU, mostly concerning its desirability and whether it will ever come to exist. Now it is here, and likely to stay. The 'next generation' of research on EMU is already under way, and this volume presents a significant...
Asia is widely regarded as the region which has benefited most from the dynamic growth effect of the recent wave of globalization: poverty has been steadily declining over the last three decades in most Asian countries. The 'shared growth' model...
Trade policies can promote aggregate efficiency, but the ensuing structural adjustments generally create both winners and losers. From an incomes perspective, trade liberalization can raise GDP per capita, but rates of emergence from poverty depend...
This paper investigates the role of aid in mitigating the adverse effects of commodity export price shocks on growth in commodity-dependent countries. Using a large cross-country dataset, we find that negative shocks matter for short-term growth...
This paper attempts to analyse the economic implications of the rise of China, India, Brazil and South Africa, for developing countries situated in the wider context of the world economy. It examines the possible impact of their rapid growth on...
This paper offers a substantive contribution to the debate on the role of international trade on the development of emerging countries. The aim is to detect empirically the phenomenon of vulnerability induced by trade openness. The methodology adopts...
This paper uses trade theory to examine the effects of trade liberalization on countries that do not participate in it. These include both countries that fail to participate in multilateral trade negotiations, and also countries that lie outside of...
Services are the fastest growing portion of world trade and now account for nearly a quarter of global exports. This presents opportunities for emerging economies to adapt and enter new markets. Many countries in southern Africa have struggled to...
Conventional explanations of Taiwan and China’s economic success point to the shift from an import-substituting industrialization (ISI) strategy to an export-oriented industrialization (EOI) strategy. This paper argues that the development strategies...
This paper investigates how the two types of globalization—i.e., integration of international trade and emigration—affected poverty reduction in the Philippines. Using the Family Income and Expenditure Surveys from 1985 to 2000, we found that both...
For the Central Asian countries the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to economic disintegration as old coordination mechanisms disappeared and new national borders appeared. This paper analyses why it has been difficult to coordinate aid for...
Bilateral trade of geographically distant countries is likely to be negatively affected by the distance separating them from their trading partners and positively affected by their remoteness, defined as the average weighted distance between two...
A large part of Africa is chronically affected by a severe food crisis which threatens the food security of many of her inhabitants. A peculiarity of this continent is that food production is not only a source of food but also a source of incomes for...
We envisage a logical framework to explain why some trade negotiations are delayed because parties differ on who should ‘go first’. In our model, there are substantive welfare implications depending on which party sets tariff rates (or subsidies)...
Models of economic geography predict that transportation costs directly affect demand for goods and the supply of intermediate inputs. One of the reasons that international trade is concentrated in the coastal provinces of China is that they have...
This paper presents a review of recent studies that estimate the trade effects of foreign aid. It also provides new results obtained using panel data techniques to estimate the direct effects of aid on international trade, accounting for countries’...
Fossil-fuel subsidies are economically inefficient and harmful for the environment yet efforts to phase them out at the national and international levels have not been effective. The existing international legal framework is too weak and fragmented...
This paper examines, from a multidisciplinary perspective, plausible hypotheses for implementation of border carbon adjustment mechanisms, seen as a complement to strong environmental regulation. It highlights economic, legal, and political...
This paper analyses the role of exchange rates in the competition for FDI. Based on the assumption that two countries compete for FDI from the same source country, the paper shows explicitly that the relative FDI of one country is determined by the...
The Doha Ministerial Declaration emphasized that priority should be given to improving market access for products originating in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). In this paper, we analyze the importance of this proposition with respect to market...
Using a computable general equilibrium simulation model and partial equilibrium simulations, based on the SMART model, the paper attempts to assess the aggregate worldwide distribution of gains and losses of the EU’s Everything But Arms (EBA)...
Countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Angola, and Sierra Leone are now attempting to recover from major wars, often amidst continuing insecurity. The challenge is to achieve a broad-based recovery that benefits the majority of people. The economic and...
This paper proposes a structural VAR model which extends the frameworks of Hoffmaister and Roldós (2001) and Prasad (1999). The model is then used to analyse the sources of China’s trade balance fluctuations in the period of 1985–2000. Efforts are...
We study whether financial openness facilitates the economic integration of formerly centrally planned economies with the EU-15. Two dimensions of economic integration are considered: cross-country convergence of per-capita incomes and bilateral...
In evaluating tax reform in the developing countries, one first needs to determine what is the unique role of the tax system in each particular country. One of the key reasons for undertaking tax reforms in Kenya was to address issues of inequality...
China’s recent accession to the WTO is expected to accelerate its integration into the world economy, which aggravates concerns over the impact of globalization on the already rising inter-regional income inequality in China. This paper discusses...
Agriculture contributes substantially to output and employment in South Asian countries. Therefore, any change, like trade liberalization, that impacts on the agriculture sector has widespread ramifications in terms of employment, nutrition...
The current paper demonstrates a dichotomy of the growth response to changes in the barter terms of trade, employing as case studies the two African countries, Botswana and Nigeria. Using distributed-lag analysis, the paper finds that the effect of...
This paper investigates some of the existing hypotheses regarding the transmission of different colonial legacies to modern day economic growth. The fact that different colonial strategies were pursued by different colonizers in various territories...
Vietnam has been among the most successful East Asian economies, especially in weathering the external shocks of recent globalization crises—the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and the 2008-09 great recession, financial crisis and collapse of global...
The paper revisits the policy debate on institutional reform approaches to property rights protection and empirically examines it in the context of FDI flows to the Middle East and Northern Africa region (MENA). Using panel data on 11 MENA countries...
The objectives of this paper are to examine the impact of liberalization on trade deficits and current accounts for developing economies. Attempts at liberalization in trade could lead to an increase in imports in the short run and this could cause...
Sustainable development is a long-term process, and as such must be examined carefully. Development implies structural changes of many different types, ranging from purely economic aspects to those affecting the personal circumstances of people...
The paper identifies and analyses the factors that influenced the export performance of firms in the post-liberalization era of the Indian economy. The study is based on primary data collected from fifty-one firms located in the national capital...
This paper attempts to answer the following question: If the HIPC Initiative is fully successful and managed to write-off all debt that is owed by Africa, will the debt problem be over? The answer is ‘no’. This pessimist answer is arrived at by...
This paper explains the evolution and effects of Mexico-US migration, and highlights the NAFTA approach to economic integration, viz., free up trade and investment while stepping up efforts to prevent unauthorized migration. The European Union...
This paper revisits the link between exchange rate regimes and trade in the context of Africa’s exchange rate arrangements. Applying an augmented gravity model that includes measures of currency unions and pegged regimes, the paper compares Africa’s...
This paper first shows that important economic arguments in favor of the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis of falling terms of trade of developing countries have implicitly relied on the role of multinational corporations and foreign direct investment. As...
Empirical studies have shown that trade agreements have different effects on countries based on their level of development, especially in trade potentials. There have been several trade agreements between North-South and South-South countries, which...
This study revisits the effect of aid on the quality of institutions and examines the effects of a major source of instability, namely terms-of-trade instability, on the quality of democracy. We take advantage of previous empirical findings which...
The telecommunications sector in Africa presents many exciting prospects to international investors—indeed many billion dollar projects are already underway across the continent. Many of the continent’s current problems can be traced to the...
Scholars and policy makers believe that democracy will bring prosperity through integration into the global economy via increased international trade. This study tests two theories as to why democracies might trade more. First, political freedom may...
Industrial policy has attracted considerable controversy in the development context. This paper makes a case for a pragmatic and limited approach to interventions as a means of stimulating industrialization in the context of current and future...
Part of Journal Special Issue Developing Countries in the WTO Regime
Part of Journal Special Issue Developing Countries in the WTO Regime
Part of Journal Special Issue Developing Countries in the WTO Regime
Part of Book The WTO, Developing Countries and the Doha Development Agenda
Part of Book The WTO, Developing Countries and the Doha Development Agenda
Part of Book The Impact of Globalization on the World's Poor
Part of Book The Impact of Globalization on the World's Poor
Part of Book The Impact of Globalization on the World's Poor
Part of Book Globalization and the Poor in Asia
Part of Book Globalization and the Poor in Asia
Part of Book Globalization and the Poor in Asia
Part of Book Food Security
Part of Book Food Security
Part of Book Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Economic Development
Part of Book Spatial Inequality and Development
Part of Book Institutional Change and Economic Development
Part of Book Poverty, International Migration and Asylum
Part of Book New Economy in Development
Part of Book The WTO, Developing Countries and the Doha Development Agenda
Part of Book The WTO, Developing Countries and the Doha Development Agenda
Part of Book The WTO, Developing Countries and the Doha Development Agenda
Part of Book The WTO, Developing Countries and the Doha Development Agenda
Static and dynamic gains from trade are the reasons why countries embark on the path of free trade, expecting this to promote industrialization and development. There is nothing, however, in the conventional theory of international trade that...
Should developing countries focus on diversifying their export basket or should they instead specialize their exports according to their existing comparative advantage? In this paper we attempt to answer this question by reviewing the literature on...
We use a modified gravity model to estimate the relationship between trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). We find evidence of a significant causal relationship from SADC’s exports to inward...
The Indian economy has observed significant trade reforms since the mid 1980s, and the Indian manufacturing sector has rapidly increased its integration with the world economy. In this paper, we ask the question: did the increased trade integration...
We compare economic efficiencies in Brazil, India, and China, where economic efficiency measures the gap between potential and actual output for a given input combination and technological factor. We use stochastic production frontier models to...
Vietnam has been following China’s path closely and very successfully for the last two decades, since the adoption of ‘Doi moi’ in 1986. Over those last two decades, economic growth rates in both countries have been the highest worldwide (with GDP...
Part of Book Food Price Policy in an Era of Market Instability
Part of Journal Special Issue Developing Countries in the WTO Regime
Part of Journal Special Issue Developing Countries in the WTO Regime
Part of Journal Special Issue Globalization, Poverty, and Inequality in Latin America
Part of Journal Special Issue Globalization, Poverty, and Inequality in Latin America
Part of Book Understanding Small-Island Developing States
Part of Book Falling Inequality in Latin America
Part of Book Pathways to Industrialization in the Twenty-First Century
Part of Journal Special Issue FDI, Employment, and Growth in China and India
Part of Book Southern Engines of Global Growth
Part of Book Southern Engines of Global Growth
Part of Book The Poor under Globalization in Asia, Latin America, and Africa
Part of Book The Poor under Globalization in Asia, Latin America, and Africa
Part of Book The Poor under Globalization in Asia, Latin America, and Africa
Part of Journal Special Issue Fragility and Development in Small Island Developing States
Part of Book The Rise of China and India
Part of Book The Rise of China and India
Rising powers have had a profound impact on the WTO. For over half a century the trading system was dominated by the US and other advanced...
Part of Journal Special Issue Development Aid
Part of Journal Special Issue South-South and North-South Trade Agreements
Part of Journal Special Issue South-South and North-South Trade Agreements
Part of Journal Special Issue South-South and North-South Trade Agreements
This paper examines the effect of foreign trade induced product market competition, upon workplace gender discrimination in urban Mexico as measured by the gender earnings differential. More than four decades ago, Becker argued that labour market...
This paper analyses a number of the challenges confronting developing countries seeking to use the WTO Doha negotiations to promote their economic growth and performance. A precondition for success is to have clear objectives and to take a pro-active...
This paper reviews the critical theoretical and policy issues relating to growth, economic development and structural transition in small states. The paper discusses alternative perspectives on small size and highlights the salient characteristics...
We analyse the clustering of European ICT activities. Our focus is primarily on the ICT manufacturing industries in the EU countries. We find a clear and intensifying concentration tendency of ICT-related production and R&D. As a rule, originally...
This paper constructs a macroeconomic model of North-South interaction where the flow of narcotics from the South to the North is restricted. Their economic effects are akin to quantitative restrictions in trade policy. Two alternative policy...
Following the economic liberalization in India, the service sector has gained prominence in the economy as it accounts for the largest share of GDP and, also that the share of this sector in GDP has been growing very rapidly. Empirical data reveal...
In recent years there has been a growing literature that analyses the threat which Chinese exports pose to the exports of other developing countries. The paper provides a critique of the standard measures of export similarity which have been used to...
For many in Latin America, the increasing participation of China and India in international markets is seen as a looming shadow of two ‘mighty giants’ on the region’s manufacturing sector. Are they really mighty giants when it comes to their impact...
Economic emergence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and India has fundamentally altered the economic landscape of Asia and its relation to the global economy. Using the new dynamic global model, we present forecasts for Asian expansion over...
Schumepterian growth theory stresses the role of structural change in long run growth. Countries which increase the share of technology-intensive sectors in their economic structures benefit more from technological learning and innovation. In...
China’s global expansion has led to concerns amongst other developing country exporters that they will be displaced by Chinese competition in their export markets. The paper develops a new index to measure the extent of the competitive threat which...
Using panel data, this paper explores the effects of openness to international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth. Fixed-effect and adjusted fixed-effect (regional-effect) estimations yield results consistent with the...
The software and information services (SIS) sector is at the heart of the New Economy and has been rapidly growing through the whole world during the last decades. This is also the case in Argentina where in the middle of a deep recession, the...
China has been running a large trade surplus with the rest of the world, particularly with the USA and EU. This has caused considerable diplomatic tensions and tremendous pressure on the Chinese currency. Existing analytical studies, however, mostly...
This study explores the on-going development of a global digital economy through a case-study analysis of its impact on and prospects in South Africa. It argues that four factors are key to understanding the impact of the digital economy on a...
This paper synthesizes the evidence on price transmission from international maize, rice and wheat markets to domestic markets in fourteen developing countries during the global food crisis in 2007-08. A great variation in the price transmission...
The paper discusses the costs and benefits to be expected by least-developed and low-income (‘vulnerable’) economies if they accede to the WTO, the impact of current debates about WTO reform on vulnerable economies, and measures to make it easier for...
This paper analyses the links between the integration into the international economy and development in Latin America over the past quarter century. It argues that external liberalization led to faster export growth but not to faster GDP or...
This paper examines the impact of increasing integration of the island economies of the South Pacific into expanding international markets, particularly that of Fiji and the Solomon Islands. Since the 1980s, globalization of the world economy has...
There has been a recent resurgence of interest in the relationship between income inequality and growth, manifested in a number of important publications. In parallel with this, concern with the impact of economic reform and globalization on...
This is a state-of-the-art report prepared within the UNU/WIDER project The New Regionalism and the International System - Implications for Development and Security, covering East and Southeast Asia. The report constitutes an initial inventory study...
This paper investigates short and long-run effects of trade liberalization on employment and wages. Employment and wage equations are estimated using data (1971–96) for importable and exportable sectors in Tunisia. Causality tests show that causality...
This paper offers a medium-term perspective for analysing the trade openness–inequality relationship in Latin America. We present three contributions. The first is that we assemble a database on income distribution indicators systematically estimated...
This paper analyses China’s ICT exports growth in its two major markets Japan and the US from 1992 to 2004. It focuses on ICT products classified in SITC 75, 76 and 77. The empirical results show that Chinese exports had maintained two-digit annual...
The segmentation of global manufacturing and services provided China and subsequently India with a golden opportunity to make full use of their absolute advantage—low cost yet educated labour—to integrate into the world economy within a comparatively...
Success in international trade depends, amongst other things, on distance from markets. Most new economic geography models focus on the distance between countries. In contrast much less theorizing and empirical analysis have focused on how distances...
This paper analyses the patterns of export productivity and trade specialization profiles in the China, Brazil, India and South Africa, and in other regional groupings. In doing so, the investigation calculates a time varying export productivity...
Using a panel of 139 countries over the period 1992-2003, we analyse the links between export productivity, economic growth and financial development indicators. We then investigate whether the links observed in China, India and Brazil systematically...
We use novel linked employer–employee data to study the relationship between globalization and formal sector interstate migration for Brazil. We estimate the worker’s multichoice migration problem and document that previously unobserved employer...
Over the past few years, many commentators have suggested that the Internet is one of the forces driving globalization. This paper tries to assess one aspect of these claims, looking at whether Internet access appears to affect the export performance...
This paper uses a duration analysis based on adoption data spanning over 25 years from six communities in the Central Highlands of Guatemala to explore how household characteristics and external trends play into both the adoption and diffusion...
Using data from developing countries, this paper explores the nature and direction of the links between ICT diffusion and per capita income, trade and financial indicators, education, and freedom indicators. Internet hosts, Internet users, personal...
This paper examines the welfare implications of foreign aid within the framework of a two-period, two-country model of international trade. It is up to the donor country to decide what fraction of any given aid package is to be made available for the...
The rise of China as an economic and political ‘driver’ of the global economy is likely to be one of the defining moments of world history. Its dynamism and international expansion are on the verge of creating a ‘critical disruption’ in the global...
Industrialization has long been seen as the answer to underdevelopment and poverty. First this led countries to follow protectionist import substitution policies but as these failed developing countries have opened up to trade and FDI and tried to...
This paper argues that relative exchange rates between the host countries of foreign direct investment affect their competition for FDI. Specifically, if the host country currency appreciates against the source country's currency more than that of...
This paper explores the relationship between imports and firm productivity, focusing on imported intermediates. Using firm-level data on over 20,000 manufacturing firms in Vietnam, we find evidence for competition-induced productivity gains from...
This paper investigates short and long-run effects of trade liberalization on employment and wages. Employment and wage equations are estimated using data (1971–96) for importable and exportable industrial sectors in Tunisia. Causality tests show...
This paper constructs a macroeconomic model of North–South interaction where the flow of narcotics from the South to the North is restricted. The economic effects are akin to quantitative restrictions in trade policy. Two alternative policy scenarios...
These are turbulent times for the international trading community, the WTO in particular. Although Cancun failed,Can the WTO still reassert its development-credibility by ensuring that Doha truly becomes the Development Round?What should the...
Part of Book Trade Policy, Industrialization, and Development
Part of Book Trade Policy and Industrialization in Turbulent Times
Part of Book Trade Policy and Industrialization in Turbulent Times
Part of Book The End of Military Fordism
Part of Book Transnational Corporations and the Global Economy
Part of Book Transnational Corporations and the Global Economy
Small island developing states (SIDS) are characterised by high economic, geographical and social vulnerability. These states are perceived as economically vulnerable, exhibiting poor economic performance, and embedding low levels of achieved well...
What are the implications of the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture for food security in poor countries? Are economic reforms and high growth rates in some countries protecting the well-being of the poor by improving the status of nutrition? Are we...
Part of Book Manufacturing for Export in the Developing world
The discussions in this book offer an informative & compelling account of the recent changes in development & the main political & economic trends shaping the international environment. It focuses on the changing global scene & its impact on...