Economic research and trade policy analysis
Agricultural Logistics in Lagging Regions: Evidence from Uganda
Small scale farmers face many hurdles when attempting to connect to global markets. While infrastructure and trade facilitation improvements are helping to reduce overall trade costs the challenges faced by such farmers are most acute at the local level. Efforts to eradicate poverty therefore need to start with constraints at the farmgate. The problems faced are compounded by the general lack access to proper agricultural inputs technology and intermediate services.
Gender Welfare Effects of Regional Trade Integration on Households in Ghana
Over the past two to three decades a number of developing countries have pursued regional economic integration to harmonize trade policies and increase their weight in global trade. Economic integration particularly in Africa has also been seen as a way to diversify the structure of African economies boost intra-African trade and investment build supply capacity and sustainably reduce poverty (Osakwe 2015). These integration efforts have resulted in the creation of regional blocs such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and Arab Maghreb Union (AMU). The trade-related objectives of these blocs include the establishment of custom unions with a common external tariff (CET) as a major trade policy instrument.
Trade and Poverty Reduction
Global trade has contributed strongly to reducing poverty but important challenges remain in making trade work for the poorest. This publication presents eight case studies to reveal how trade can help to reduce poverty in developing countries. It focuses on four constraints faced by the extremely poor – namely that they tend to live in rural areas work in the informal sector live in fragile and conflict-affected regions and face gender inequality. The case studies identify ways to overcome these constraints including through the adoption of policies that maximize the contribution of trade to poverty reduction. The studies also highlight the ongoing gaps in data and research that constrain policy-making. The publication is a follow-up to The Role of Trade in Ending Poverty co-published by the WTO and the World Bank in 2015 which examined the challenges the poor face in benefiting from trade opportunities. The country-specific approach of this new publication complements the global perspective of the previous report.
The Poverty Impact of Modernising Dar es Salaam Port
This study assesses the likely impact of the modernization of the Port of Dar es Salaam on household welfare and poverty in Tanzania and neighboring countries. Trade volumes in Tanzania increased more than 10% per year in the last decade and international trade has been one of the engines of growth in the country. However the current state of Dar es Salaam port is a severe constraint on further growth. Increasing the efficiency of the port is a key challenge; container vessels have to wait an average of more than 10 days before berthing and dwell times average another 10 days. The costs associated with the inefficiencies in the port are partially related to congestion. The situation is more critical for imports than for exports; the inefficiencies act as an implicit tax on imports and to a lesser extent as a tax on exports (Morisset 2013).
A world of opportunities and challenges
Research published by the European Parliament in 2017 claimed that Blockchain could “change our lives” (Boucher 2017). What the various blockchain applications that are being developed in areas as diverse as trade finance trade facilitation trade in services intellectual property and government procurement show is that Blockchain has the potential to impact both the traders and the government agencies involved in international trade significantly. Opportunities are multifaceted but will only be realized if several key challenges are addressed.
Conclusion
Research published by the European Parliament in 2017 claimed that Blockchain could “change our lives” (Boucher 2017). What the various blockchain applications that are being developed in areas as diverse as trade finance trade facilitation trade in services intellectual property and government procurement show is that Blockchain has the potential to impact both the traders and the government agencies involved in international trade significantly. Opportunities are multifaceted but will only be realized if several key challenges are addressed.
Introduction
The world is continually changing driven by technological innovations that affect the way we live and do business. The history of the world economy is intimately linked to technological progress. The invention of the steam engine mechanized production the discovery of electricity enabled mass production and the rise of the internet made it possible to coordinate various production stages at a distance leading to a fragmentation of production that gave rise to global value chains.
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks go to my colleague Ms Kenza Le Mentec for her precious guidance. Kenza introduced me to the subject and provided invaluable inputs in particular for the technical sections describing the technology and the section on trade facilitation. This publication would not have been possible without her support.
Can blockchain revolutionize international trade?
Trade has always been shaped by technological innovation. In recent times a new technology Blockchain has been greeted by many as the next big game-changer. Can Blockchain revolutionize international trade? This publication seeks to demystify the Blockchain phenomenon by providing a basic explanation of the technology. It analyses the relevance of this technology for international trade by reviewing how it is currently used or can be used in the various areas covered by WTO rules. In doing so it provides an insight into the extent to which this technology could affect cross-border trade in goods and services and intellectual property rights. It discusses the potential of Blockchain for reducing trade costs and enhancing supply chain transparency as well as the opportunities it provides for small-scale producers and companies. Finally it reviews various challenges that must be addressed before the technology can be used on a wide scale and have a significant impact on international trade.
Can Blockchain revolutionize international trade?
The number of headlines claiming that Blockchain can revolutionize various areas of international trade from trade finance to customs procedures and intellectual property are legion. The transparent decentralized and immutable nature of Blockchain has sparked the interest of private actors – and governments – to explore the potential of this technology to enhance the efficiency of trade processes and a myriad of proofs of concepts and pilot projects using Blockchain have been developed in virtually all areas of international trade.
E-commerce and Developing Country-SME Participation in Global Value Chains
Two far-reaching developments have increased the trade opportunities for SMEs in developing countries. Firstly the rise of the internet and advances in ICT have reduced trade-related information and communication costs. Secondly the international fragmentation of production has increased the opportunities for SMEs to specialize in narrow activities at various stages along the production chain.
Addressing Tensions and Avoiding Disputes
Most specific trade concerns (STCs) which are raised before the WTO Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Committee) disappear from the TBT Committee’s meeting agendas without escalating into formal disputes. At the same time a relatively small number of TBT-related disputes have been subject to the WTO dispute settlement procedures. By examining the practice of raising STCs and the relationship between STCs and disputes the paper emphasises the role of STCs as a trade tension resolution mechanism.
Competition policy, trade and the global economy: Existing WTO elements, commitments in regional trade agreements, current challenges and issues for reflection
Competition policy today is an essential element of the legal and institutional framework for the global economy. Whereas decades ago anti-competitive practices tended to be viewed mainly as a domestic phenomenon most facets of competition law enforcement now have an important international dimension. Examples include: the investigation and prosecution of price fixing and market sharing arrangements that often spill across national borders and in important instances encircle the globe; multiple recent prominent cases of abuses of a dominant position in high-tech network industries; important current cases involving transnational energy markets; and major corporate mergers that often need to be simultaneously reviewed by multiple jurisdictions.
The “China Shock” Revisited
We exploit a decomposition of gross trade flows into their value added components to reassess the relationship between increased imports from China and manufacturing jobs in US local labour markets following the seminal paper of Autor Dorn and Hanson (2013 ADH).
How Regional Trade Agreements Deal with Disputes Concerning their TBT Provisions?
This paper investigates how RTAs treat disputes concerning their TBT provisions in particular whether they treat them differently from other types of dispute and how they deal with any potential overlap with the WTO when the substantive obligations of the RTA and the WTO TBT Agreement are the same (or similar).