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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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.