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Dominican Republic - Anti-dumping measures on corrugated steel bars
China - Anti-Dumping measures on stainless steel products from Japan
Chine - Mesures antidumping visant les produits en acier inoxydable en provenance du Japon
República Dominicana - Medidas antidumping sobre barras de acero corrugadas
Restoring Trade Finance During a Period of Financial Crisis
The paper discusses the efforts deployed in 2008 and 2009 by various players Governments multilateral financial institutions regional development banks export credit agencies to mobilize sufficient flows of trade finance to off-set some of the “pull-back” by commercial institutions in the period of acute crisis that has characterized the financial sector in the past two years. Given that 80 to 90% of trade transactions involve some form of credit insurance or guarantee one can reasonably say that supply-side driven shortages of trade finance have a potential to inflict further damages to international trade. As an institution geared towards the balanced expansion of world trade the WTO had been concerned with occurrences of market tightening throughout this period. While a number of public-institutions mobilized financial resources for trade finance in the fall of 2008 this has not been enough to bridge the gap between supply and demand of trade finance worldwide. As the market situation continued to deteriorate in the first quarter of 2009 G-20 leaders in London (April 2009) adopted a wider package for injecting additional liquidity and bringing public guarantees in support of $250 billion of trade transactions in 2009 and 2010. Ahead of the Pittsburgh Meetings experts reported that more than the targeted amount had been mobilized. In the meantime through the summer and the fall of 2009 the market situation seemed to have eased – although in many countries access to trade finance by the smaller traders had become either significantly more expensive or had simply disappeared. One can expect the trade finance market to have its up and downs for some time because lending for trade is a function of the general lending situation of commercial banks. The paper discusses longer-term initiatives aimed at improving the resilience of the trade finance market to short-term and longer-term shocks.
Product Patents and Access to Innovative Medicines in a Post-TRIPS era
This WTO working paper studies availability and affordability of new and innovative pharmaceuticals in a post-TRIPS era. The WTO’s TRIPS Agreement (TRIPS) makes it obligatory for WTO members– except least-developed country members (LDCs) - to provide pharmaceutical product patents with a 20-year protection term. Developing country members other than LDCs were meant to be compliant with this provision of TRIPS by 2005.
Can Bilateralism Ease the Pains of Multilateral Trade Liberalization?
Using the influence-driven approach to endogenous trade-policy determination we show how a free-trade agreement (FTA) with rules of origin can work as a device to compensate losers from trade liberalization. The FTA constructed in this paper is characterized by external tariff structures that are negatively correlated across member countries ensuring efficiency gains and through reduced average protection compatibility with the multilateral trading system's requirements. It is also politically viable and we demonstrate that in the countries concerned governments are willing to include its formation in the political agenda in spite of the fact that in equilibrium political contributions from producer lobbies decline after the agreement.
Information Frictions and the Law of One Price
How do information frictions distort international trade? This paper exploits a unique historical experiment to estimate the magnitude of these distortions: the establishment of the transatlantic telegraph connection in 1866. I use a newly collected data set based on historical newspaper records that provides daily data on information flows across the Atlantic together with detailed daily information on prices and trade flows of cotton. Information frictions result in large and volatile deviations from the Law of One Price. What is more the elimination of information frictions has real effects: Exports respond to information about foreign demand shocks. Average trade flows increase after the telegraph and become more volatile providing a more efficient response to demand shocks. I build a model of international trade that can explain the empirical evidence. In the model exporters use the latest news about a foreign market to forecast expected selling prices when their exports arrive at the destination Their forecast error is smaller and less volatile the more recent the available information. I estimate the welfare gains from information transmission through the telegraph to be roughly equivalent to those from abolishing a 6% ad valorem tariff.
The Role of Trade-Led Economic Growth in Fostering Development
The United Nations' post--2015- development agenda is taking shape. Like its predecessor the Millennium Development Goals the post--2015- agenda will reshape development policy priorities for governments and non-governmental actors alike in many cases galvanising new attention thinking and financing to tackle the priorities it identifies. This essay reviews the historical and ongoing role played by trade in sustained high growth and human development progress and makes the case that the post--2015- development agenda should include considerations related to trade rules and supply-side capacity. Given the strong links between trade-led growth economic upgrading and poverty reduction the paper argues that trade led economic growth must be prioritised in the post--2015- development agenda.
The Design of Preferential Trade Agreements
Since 1990 the number of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) has increased very rapidly. This paper aims to contribute to this literature by presenting a new database on PTAs called Design of Trade Agreements (DESTA). We identified a total of 690 negotiated trade agreements between 1945 and 2009 of which we have coded 404 agreements for which treaty texts and appendices were available. We aim to have a database for about 550 agreements by 2012. We have coded agreements for a total of 10 broad sectors of cooperation encompassing market access services investments intellectual property rights competition public procurement standards trade remedies non-trade issues and dispute settlement. For each of these sectors we have coded a significant number of items meaning that we have about 100 data points for each agreement. The resulting DESTA database is – to the best of our knowledge – by far the most complete in terms of agreements and sectors covered. This dataset fills a crucial gap in the field by providing a fine-grain measurement of the design of PTAs. Among others we think that DESTA will be of relevance for the literatures on the signing of PTAs; the legalization of international relations; the rational design of international institutions; the diffusion of policies; the political and economic effects of trade agreements; power relations between states; and forum shopping in international politics. This working paper describes the DESTA data set and provides selected descriptive statistics. The overview puts emphasis on variation in design over time and across regions.
Financial Services and the WTO
This paper analyses the results of the financial services negotiations under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) at the World Trade Organization (WTO). It shows that the negotiations have contributed to more stable and transparent policy regimes in many developing and transition countries. The wide range of market access and non-discrimination commitments should advance the process of progressive liberalization. The commitments do not compromise the ability of countries to pursue sound macroeconomic and regulatory policies. However other aspects of the outcome do raise some concerns. First there has been less emphasis on the introduction of competition through allowing new entry than on allowing (or maintaining) foreign equity participation and protecting the position of incumbents. Secondly even where immediate introduction of competition was not deemed feasible not much advantage has been taken of the GATS to lend credibility to liberalization programmes by precommitting to future market access.
Investment Provisions in Preferential Trade Agreements: Evolution and Current Trends
Our analysis covers 230 PTAs of which 111 contain substantive provisions on investment. Over the past 60 years or so States have created an extensive network of Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) that govern and protect international investment. The number of BITs concluded annually continues to increase although this rate has tapered off over the past decade.
Assessing the Value of Future Accessions to the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA)
The WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) is a plurilateral Agreement meaning that it comprises only a subset of the full Membership of the WTO. Currently a number of WTO Members that are not Parties to the Agreement either are actively seeking accession to it have commitments to accede to the GPA in their respective WTO accession protocols or are on their own initiative looking at the potential pros and cons of accession. In this context there is a need for factual information concerning the potential consequences of GPA accession and a framework to assess related benefits and costs. Of interest is both the systemic value of such accessions – i.e. the value they will add to the extent of market access commitments under the Agreement – and their potential benefits and costs for individual acceding Parties. This Working Paper introduces new sources of information relevant to these topics (principally the statistical reports that have been circulated recently by GPA Parties) and shows their relevance to and usefulness in assessing the above-noted matters. The Paper presents estimates of the size of potential market access gains from pending and possible future GPA accessions based on simple extrapolations from the data sources identified. Next the Paper shows how the same data sources can assist in throwing light on the potential benefits and costs of GPA accession for individual WTO Members/countries contemplating accession. The latter use of the data is developed in the context of a more general discussion of the benefits and costs of GPA accession for individual WTO Members also drawing on existing literature qualitative aspects and "insights from the field" (i.e. our own work in advising and conducting seminars for such countries and other WTO Members).
Women’s Economic Empowerment
Aid for Trade supports developing and least-developed countries in building their trade capacity and in increasing their exports by turning market access opportunities into market presence. It does so by addressing four key areas: trade policy & regulations; economic infrastructure; building productive capacity; and trade-related adjustment.
Improving the Availability of Trade Finance in Developing Countries: An Assessment of Remaining Gaps
While conditions in trade finance markets returned to normality in the main routes of trade the structural difficulties of poor countries in accessing trade finance have not disappeared – and might have been worsened during and after the global financial crisis. There is a consistent flow of information indicating that trade finance markets have remained characterized by a greater selectivity in risk-taking and flight to "quality" customers. In that environment the lower end of the market has been struggling to obtain affordable finance with the smaller companies in the smaller poorer countries most affected. In an area where statistics are difficult to find this paper looks at recent available information and provides background on the persistent and significant market gaps for trade finance in developing countries notably in Africa and developing Asia. It discusses various initiatives in which the WTO and partner institutions are involved to alleviate in part this situation.
The welfare effects of trade policy experiments in quantitative trade models
This paper compares the solution methods and baseline calibration of three different quantitative trade models (QTMs): computable general equilibrium (CGE) models structural gravity (SG) models and models employing exact hat algebra (EHA). The different solution methods generate identical results on counterfactual experiments if baseline trade shares or baseline trade costs are identical.
Special Compulsory Licences for Export of Medicines
In 2003 the WTO General Council decided to provide an additional legal pathway for WTO Members with insufficient or no manufacturing capacities in the pharmaceutical sector to access medicines. Two years later in 2005 WTO Members unanimously agreed to give this mechanism often referred to as the "Paragraph 6 System" a permanent legal status when they adopted the Protocol Amending the TRIPS Agreement. The implementation and use of the additional pro-public health flexibilities provided by the System is optional not mandatory. To take advantage of them as of July 2015 51 WTO Members have adopted specific implementing measures with a variable degree of detail and complexity which incorporate the Paragraph 6 System in their respective legal frameworks and provide the basis for them to act either as exporter or as importers or as both. This represents almost a third of the WTO Membership and the predominant bulk of existing pharmaceutical exporters. Given that unlike other flexibilities in the TRIPS Agreement the Paragraph 6 System was devised as a new mechanism without previous domestic experience to draw upon there seems to be an exceptional need for an in-depth discussion of how it has been implemented at country level to which this paper attempts to respond. There is indeed often limited knowledge in the policy and procurement communities about the wide range of specific measures that have been introduced in many major exporters of medicines and the importance of this information both from a practical point of view to facilitate exports of needed medicines and from a policy point of view to understand the implementation of this novel tool for access to medicines. To contribute to a better understanding of how the System has been implemented in practice this paper surveys domestic measures that WTO Members have put in place. By doing so it can inform the broader dialogue about access to medicines and provide practical information for procurement programmes. It can also put a valuable source of information and inspiration at the disposal of those Members who are yet in the process of considering whether and how best to implement the Paragraph 6 System in their domestic legal framework. While the survey illustrates that a robust framework supportive of the export of generic medicines to meet public health needs has been put in place by a significant number of WTO Members there is an obvious need to move a step forward and engage in a substantive review of the System including if and how better more frequent use could be made of it. To conclude the paper therefore offers some elements for reflection regarding the way forward in order to support the functioning of the Paragraph 6 System.
Aid for Trade, Foreign Direct Investment and Export Upgrading in Recipient Countries
This paper examines empirically whether Aid for Trade (AfT) programmes and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows affect export upgrading and if so whether their effects are complementary or substitutable. Export upgrading entails export diversification (including overall export diversification as well as diversification at the intensive and at the extensive margins) and export quality improvement. The empirical analysis shows that total AfT flows have a strong positive impact on export upgrading and that LDCs as compared to Non-LDCs are the most important beneficiaries of this positive impact. While the impact of FDI inflows on export diversification in host economies is mixed these flows do exert a strong positive impact on export quality upgrading. Furthermore the impact of FDI on export diversification is higher in LDCs than in Non-LDCs. Incidentally AfT and FDI inflows appear substitutes (in an economic theory sense) in achieving export diversification and complementary in their effect on the improvement of export quality in recipient countries including LDCs. Results obtained on the impact of components of total AfT are inconclusive as they suggest both complementarity and substitutability with respect to FDI inflows in affecting export upgrading in recipient countries. Overall empirical results suggest that AfT and FDI inflows are effective in influencing export upgrading in recipient countries. However the results also highlight the importance of the interplay between these two kinds of capital flows in affecting export development strategies and FDI policies of recipient countries notably LDCs. We can infer from this study that AfT flows appear to play a particularly important role in ensuring that FDI inflows do not lead to further export concentration by putting in place the necessary conditions for export diversification.
Gender-specific differences in geographical mobility
The gains from trade depend on the reallocation of resources including labour across firms and sectors. However workers are unlikely to be fully mobile since there are barriers to sectoral and geographical mobility due to social reasons such as family or existing private and professional networks. If these barriers depend on specific characteristics of workers such as education gender or race this has important implications for inequality.
Intellectual Property and Digital Trade Mapping International Regulatory Responses to Emerging Issues
This paper explores how regulatory responses to emerging IP issues in digital trade may develop at the international level and in particular how existing mechanisms might influence the chances of developing internationally agreed rules in this regard. The primacy of state sovereignty in intellectual property up to the late 19th century gave way to the important WIPO treaties which still retained some independence of member states and based international regulatory responses directly on national experience. While more regulatory sovereignty was ceded in TRIPS the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty the adoption of non-binding instruments (such as the WIPO Joint Recommendations in the area of trademarks) show the limits of decision making by consensus.