Trade and development

The WTO General Council at its first meeting on 31 January 1995 established the Committee on Trade and Development with the terms of reference decided by the Preparatory Committee. 58 1. Review of implementation of Part IV and operation of the Enabling Clause In order to enable the Committee on Trade and Development to keep under continuous review the application of the provisions of Part IV, the Committee agreed, in March 1965, on Reporting Procedures. 59 The Committee on Trade and Development also adopted Guidelines for the submission of notifications, the preparation of reports and the carrying out of reviews on the implementation of Part IV, which provide that notifications made by governments should be as exhaustive and comprehensive as possible and should relate both to measures specifically mentioned in paragraphs 1 and 3, or paragraph 4, as the case may be of Article XXXVII, as well as to all steps and measures of interest to the C ONTRACTING P ARTIES in relation to the objectives and provisions of Part IV. 60 Every year the Secretariat issues an airgram inviting contracting parties to make the relevant information available.

trade surpluses with a growing Mexican market. Paradoxically, NAFTA’s original supporters and opponents seemed to agree that, whatever else it would do, this agreement would give a major impetus to Mexico’s industrial development and job creation. Of course, NAFTA did not go into effect in a vacuum, and it is perilously difficult to disentangle exactly what were the effects of this trade agreement relative to other factors in the post-1994 evolution of the two economies. NAFTA built upon the base of the much larger tariff reductions and more far-reaching market-opening measures that Mexico had already adopted unilaterally after it joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1986, so not all of the effects of trade liberalization can be attributed to NAFTA. 3 In addition, macroeconomic factors such as financial crises, exchange rates, oil prices, and business cycles were important determinants of what actually occurred. 4 Subsequent trade agreements, both multilateral (the formation of the World Trade Organization) and preferential (the many other FTAs entered into separately by Mexico and the United States), reduced the significance of the tariff preferences contained in NAFTA. China’s emergence as a global economic power and the rapid increase in its share of North American markets have also had an enormous impact on the region.

A final stage in the development of Mexican migration preferences began to take shape during the 1980s and ’90s as the threat of migration enforcement loomed larger. Unilateral U.S. enforcement efforts failed to substantially affect Mexican access to U.S. labor markets, but the criminalization of undocumented migration and harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric offended Mexican sensibilities. With 80 percent of Mexicans having a personal connection to a current or former im- migrant, the issue took on growing political importance in a newly democratic Mexico, and new emigrant rights groups (within Mexico and spanning Mexico and the United States) demanded government action (Fitzgerald 2006; Guarnizo, Portes, and Haller 2003). At the same time, the heavy U.S. focus on border en- forcement had the perverse effect of increasing criminality and migrant deaths in the border region as migrants were more likely to rely on professional smugglers and as the U.S. “war on drugs” contributed to higher profits and more border violence. In this context, and learning from their successful effort to influence U.S. policy during the debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexican officials and others close to the government began an explicit effort during the 1990s to reframe migration as a regional problem demanding regional solutions rather than a domestic issue on which Mexico should defer to

Conversely, women seem to have borne the major brunt of fall in employment in case of decline of exports, such as in tea and coffee production which are dominated by plantation production. There is a definite increase in demand for casual workers to cope with export-related trade growth, which led to a rise in the informal sector workers, a high percentage of them being women. Casual labour while providing employment can be easily hired or laid off depending on demand fluctuations. Thus employment is precarious. They are also subjected to poor wages and conditions of work. Income for both male and female workers has improved wherever trade and globalisation has positively affected the labour market, such as in horticulture, dairying and textiles and clothing, and IT. Years of education and skill have positive effects on the workers’ earning capability. However benefits reaped by the male workers tend to be higher than that of females in terms of gain in income. Female workers earn less than male workers irrespective of the industry, region or location. Equally important, trade and globalization has a positive impact over women’s decision making power and their consequent economic empowerment. The positive effect of trade expansion on women’s employment and wages has positively affected intra-household dynamics, for instance in increasing spouse’s cooperation in the household work. So wherever female employment opportunities have improved, women became increasingly empowered. On the basis of such findings, the study concludes overall that there are positive gains across a wide spectrum of sectors for women’s employment and empowerment with trade and globalization. However, the situation is yet to achieve a notable improvement in the real empowerment for women, equitable distribution of household responsibilities, equal pay for work of equal value and gender balance across occupations. The process of feminization with export-oriented manufacturing industries has not been large enough to counteract other forces which contribute to the downward pressure on women’s work participation rates. There is thus a need to consciously work in India and within the global economy towards exploiting fully the potential of women labour power in the service of trade and development.

remittances, and returns. The greatest benefits to migrants and their countries of origin arise from the emigration of unskilled workers, since they are most easily replaced at home and less likely to settle abroad. Remittances surpassed Official Development Assistance in the mid-1990s as a source of foreign exchange in developing countries and continue to grow. Conflicting views exist on the role played by return migrants. The optimistic scenario sees returning migrants as change agents, investing remittances and using skills acquired abroad to acceler- ate development at home. The pessimistic scenario states that migrants who work abroad often return to rest and retire, limiting their impacts on economic develop- ment. In the second part of his paper, Martin looked at the link between trade and migration. Since free trade agreements speed up economic and job growth in all participating countries, they tend to reduce unwanted migration into high-wage countries in the long run. However, trade agreements may trigger more migration in the short term, because freer trade can immediately speed up labor-displacing change, while time is required to generate new jobs.

Acknowledgements I owe a debt of gratitude to many people for the role they played in helping me obtain a Ph.D. Timothy Kehoe and Fabrizio Perri have provided invaluable guidance as advisers. Jim Schmitz supported me as his research assistant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and taught me never to accept data at face value, and to always try to understand at a deep level how it is created. Enoch Hill and David Perez-Reyna, my co-authors on the second chapter, have been great colleagues and friends, and our essay would not have been possible without them. All of the participants in the University of Minnesota Trade and Development Workshop from 2010-2014 patiently listened to me present my research about 9,000 times and provided considered feedback. The comments and suggestions provided by Thomas Holmes, Cristina Arellano, Arilton Teixeira, and Jose Asturias also deserve to be singled out.

Abdelaziz of Egypt and H.E. Ambassador Johan L. Løvald of Norway. The meeting consisted of an initial panel discussion followed by an interactive dialogue amongst all stakeholders. The panel presentations were made by Ms. Lakshmi Puri, Acting Deputy Secretary-General and Director, Division on International Trade in Goods and Services, and Commodities, UNCTAD; Mr. Martin Khor, Director, Third World Network; Mr. Kym Anderson, George Gollin Professor of Economics, University of Adelaide, Australia; Mr. Peter Thompson, Director for Trade and Development, European Commission; and Mr. Hamidur Rashid, Director-General for Multilateral Economic Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bangladesh. (Views expressed during the interaction of panelists with the floor -question and answer period - are also included in section II – Panel presentations). After the panel presentations, a policy discussion took place among participants, including representatives of governments as well as institutional and non-institutional stakeholders.

The Trade Point Programme was launched by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1992. Its main objective is to facilitate access for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to international markets, in particular using the most up-to-date technologies in electronic commerce. Through the electronically interconnected network of Trade Points in many countries of the world, SMEs can gain access to the latest information and telecommunication technologies and services, make their products known to potential customers and find business partners in other countries. These services are provided at a reasonable cost, with the overall objective of increasing the participation of SMEs - particularly those from developing countries and from countries with economies in transition - in international trade. The activities undertaken by UNCTAD in this area were subject to an in-depth review by UNCTAD’s member States. This assessment resulted in a new strategy for the Trade Point Programme up to 2002, focusing on capacity building and renovation of the GTPNet.

Executive summary At its fifteenth session, the Intergovernmental Working Group of Experts on International Standards of Accounting and Reporting (ISAR) decided to devote its sixteenth session to the development of a global accounting curriculum and other qualification requirements for professional accountants. While work was already well advanced on this topic, it considered that, given the progress at the World Trade Organization on accounting disciplines, it was necessary to produce a global curriculum to serve as a benchmark to cut the time and cost of negotiating mutual recognition agreements. It therefore requested UNCTAD to continue its work on the development of a global curriculum as well as on other requirements for professional accountants in cooperation with other relevant bodies such as the International Federation of Accountants, the Arab Society of Certified Accountants and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.

In 2014–15, the risk response strategy focused on the implementation of a comprehensive change management plan led by a revised governance structure under the oversight of the Corporate Management Committee. Significant progress has been made on a number of amalgamation initiatives. A new Program Alignment Architecture and related Performance Measurement Framework were developed to provide a streamlined and integrated business model for the new department. A new DFATD human resource strategy was developed and launched, and a new integrated departmental security plan was approved. Roles and responsibilities of DFATD Heads of Missions were clarified and steps were taken to ensure policy coherence between trade, development and diplomacy priorities. The focus for 2015-16 will be on completing

19. However, these countries may still exploit opportunities in e-commerce-based transport/logistics services by selecting areas where they may have competitive advantage, in accordance with the available infrastructure and technological capacities. In particular, the application of e-commerce in ports could contribute to the efficiency of international trade and its development. Ports are of crucial importance to developing countries as they constitute a nodal point in the transport system linking often high-technology international transport with local transport services that use a limited technology base. With the growing use of information technologies (IT) in cargo booking, tracking, clearance and delivery by major shipping lines, as well as in Customs clearance, all ports are required to become efficient interfaces for shipping services in a world closely connected through logistics chains. Availability of common-user and robust e-commerce-based administrative and commercial services in these developing countries’

E. Environmental Justice The Basel Convention and the subsequent development of hazardous waste control norms like the Bamako Convention 201 were, in parts, an affirmation of the principle of environmental justice. They recognized the presence of gross economic disparities in the world and the consequent disparate impact of environmentally harmful activities on different countries in the world. 202 They were born out of the deep outrage at the abhorrent but widespread practice of dumping highly hazardous and toxic substance by the developed countries of the world in the developing countries. Recognizing that developing countries would not be able to deal with the consequences of trade in hazardous substances due to the absence of adequate political, legal, medical and economic infrastructure, it called for minimization of transboundary movement, particularly to developing countries, of hazardous substances and greater responsibility for the developed countries. 203

We can also use the panel dimension of the data to shed light on this relationship. In particular, we test whether financial development over a five-year horizon is affected by trade openness in the beginning of the period: F inDev jt = α + β 1 ∗ T rade jt−1 + β 2 ∗ T rade jt−1 ∗ Income jt−1 + δ ∗ X jt−1 + η j + ε jt , where t = 1965-69, 1970-74, 1975-79, 1980-84, 1985-89, and 1990-95. The specification includes a full set of country dummies, thus controlling for any country characteristics that are not time-varying. The results are presented in Table 6. Unfortunately, we cannot use the instrumental variables approach here, as the trade openness instrument is not time-varying, and thus is perfectly correlated with the country fixed effects. Column 1 contains the base specification. The trade-income interaction term is positive and significant, in parallel to the cross-sectional regression. We establish that this effect is not driven by our choice of financial development variable in Columns 2 and 3. The interaction of interest remains significant when we use alternative measures of financial development. In the last column, we include a full set of time dummies. We see that our results are not driven purely by omitted time effects, in fact the coefficient of interest is virtually unchanged.

 Capacity strengthening of RGB: RGB will be enabled to put in place mechanisms for efficient registration of CSOs, including online registration and other ICT-based services, and also to implement its new strategic plan (for the CSO component) as well as the publication of a CSO directory on a bi-annual basis. Further, RGB intends to forge links with local academic institutions to provide short professional courses for CSOs. Additionally, RGB will convene annual policy dialogues on civil society and democratisation to discuss achievements and challenges in CSO development. The political economy of Rwanda is certainly not without challenges considering the question marks over the ability of its citizens to engage freely in political activity. However, the country’s model of CSO advocacy, as presented by its Government, has the potential to inform the evolving strategies of other EAC partner states and beyond. This considers the way in which inclusive public/private sector engagement, empowered under a legal framework, can serve to build shared ownership and accountability in this case, in the progress of trade reform.

In economics the term ‘trade-off’ is expressed as opportunity cost, referring to the most preferred alternative given up. A trade-off, then, involves a sacrifice that must be made to obtain a certain product, rather than other products that can be made using the same required resources. For a person going to a basketball game, its opportunity cost is the money and time expended, say that would have been spent watching a particular television program (Wikipedia). Another key word is ‘sustainable development’. Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (World Commission on Environment and Development). Sustainable development was added as one of the general objectives of the World Trade Organization when it was established in 1994.

An increasingly important facet of the international arms trade are so-called offsets, arrangements that obligate the arms seller to reinvest (“offset”) arms sales proceeds in the purchasing country. In justifying arms expenditure and in promoting local industrial activity, offsets are claimed to offer significant benefits to developing countries, yet until recently there has been little research on how well offsets work in practise. This paper considers some of the issues and current empirical evidence. We find virtually no case where offset arrangements have yielded unambiguous net benefits for a country’s economic development. As a general rule arms trade offset deals are more costly than

The spatial distribution of per capita income will also mimic such a pattern. If labor is instead mobile among regions, the agglomeration process in the core region will continue until real returns on labor are equalized across regions. In this case, the spatial distribution of industrial activities remains asymmetric and regional economic development is heterogeneous. In sum, causality runs from TCs to agglomeration and income. But there is also the opposite causality from agglomeration to TCs. The core attracts firms and labor from the periphery because it enjoys higher productivity, including sectors such as information services and distribution that are so important for international and interregional trade. Scale economies from agglomeration reduce TCs. The core also benefits from better infrastructure and public administration resulting from agglomeration, which tend to reduce TCs. In the end, causality is potentially bi-directional.

Universitat de les Illes Balears June 2006 Abstract Recent evidence on the respective contributions of institutions and trade to income levels across countries has demonstrated that – once endogeneity is considered – institutional quality clearly dominates the effect of trade. We argue that overall trade is not the most appropriate measure for technology diffusion as a source of productivity growth and propose to focus on imports of research and development (R&D) intensive goods instead. Overall, we confirm previous findings that institutions matter most and that overall trade is not positively associated with per-capita income levels. Yet this does not hold for technology trade, as there is a positive and significant linkage between technology imports and income levels. This outcome is robust to various model specifications, including an instrumental variable approach.

Recent evidence on the respective contributions of institutions and trade to income levels across countries has demonstrated that – once endogeneity is considered – institutional quality clearly dominates the effect of trade. We argue that overall trade is not the most appropriate measure for technology diffusion as a source of productivity growth and propose to focus on imports of research and development (R&D) intensive goods instead. Overall, we confirm previous findings that institutions matter most and that overall trade is not positively associated with per-capita income levels. Yet this does not hold for technology trade, as there is a positive and significant linkage between technology imports and income levels. This outcome is robust to various model specifications, including an instrumental variable approach.

This paper deals with migrants’ role in stimulating development in their countries of origin, outlining the three major channels through which migra- tion can affect development: recruitment, remittances, and returns. It next turns to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), assessing the relevance of the Mexico–United States migration hump for migration, trade, and develop- ment elsewhere. The paper concludes that migrants can accelerate development in their countries of origin but finds nothing mechanical or automatic about the migration and development linkage. Countries growing and ready to grow can benefit from migration’s three R’s: recruitment, remittances, and returns. But in other cases, migration’s three R’s can prevent an economic takeoff. Thus, the an- swer to the question of whether migration accelerates development is simple: It depends.