Economic research and trade policy analysis
Foreword by the Director-General
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is the world’s first general multilateral trade agreement. It was signed in 1947 and came into force on 1 January 1948. As the contracting parties began to implement what is more widely known as the GATT 1947 it is unlikely they would have foreseen the full magnitude of the political and economic importance of their accord and its enduring impact as a fundamental framework for multilateral trade right up to the present day.
Acknowledgements/Disclaimer
This publication was prepared by Arti Gobind Daswani Roy Santana and János Volkai of the WTO Secretariat with the support of WTO Deputy Director-General Karl Brauner Valerie Hughes (former Director of the WTO’s Legal Affairs Division) Suja Rishikesh Mavroidis (Director of the WTO Market Access Division) and John Adank (Director of the Legal Affairs Division). Special acknowledgment is owed to WTO staff members Jesse Kreier and Olga Falgueras Alamo from the Rules Division for their contribution to the compilation of relevant documents.
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.
One-page case summaries
A one-page case summary is devoted to each of the 316 GATT disputes identified by this publication.
Introduction
Provisional application of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT 1947) began 70 years ago in 1948 and the same year the first GATT dispute was initiated. In total 316 disputes were brought under the GATT 1947 and related agreements in its almost 50 years of provisional application.
Disclaimer
In the interest of accuracy this publication uses the historical names of GATT contracting parties as they were used at the time of each dispute e.g. Ceylon Czechoslovakia Hong Kong the Federal Republic of Germany Yugoslavia or the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Likewise this publication makes reference to EEC-6 EEC-9 EEC-10 or EEC-12 to reflect different stages of enlargement of the European Economic Communities. It also refers to individual EEC member States (e.g. France Italy etc.) for cases when these countries acted in their own capacity.
Overview
The year 2018 marked the 70th anniversary of the provisional application of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT 1947). Although it was intended to be applied on a provisional basis the GATT 1947 governed international trade for almost half a century. Its principles rules and procedures evolved over this period to respond to the changing needs and challenges of GATT contracting parties providing the basis for today’s strengthened international trade rules under the GATT’s successor the World Trade Organization (WTO).
GATT Disputes: 1948-1995 - Overview and One-Page Case Summaries (Vol. 1)
GATT disputes: 1948-1995 (Volume 1) provides verified and factual information on disputes brought by contracting parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) from 1948 to 1995 when the GATT was superseded by the World Trade Organization (WTO). The publication provides a comprehensive overview of dispute settlement activities under the GATT 1947 and a one-page case summary for each of the 316 GATT disputes brought by contracting parties during this period. Volume 2 of this publication covers GATT dispute settlement procedures. The two volumes offer insights into the evolution of dispute settlement under the GATT 1947 which served as the foundation for the Dispute Settlement Understanding created by the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the WTO.
GATT Disputes: 1948-1995 - Dispute Settlement Procedures (Vol. 2)
GATT disputes: 1948-1995 (Volume 2) compiles documents regarding dispute settlement procedures under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1947 and other selected documents. It complements Volume 1 which provides a comprehensive overview of dispute settlement activities under the GATT 1947 and a one-page case summary for each of the 316 disputes brought by GATT contracting parties from 1948 to 1995 when the GATT was superseded by the World Trade Organization (WTO). The two volumes offer insights into the evolution of dispute settlement under the GATT 1947 which served as the foundation for the Dispute Settlement Understanding created by the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the WTO.
Is Tunisian Trade Policy Pro-poor?
Trade liberalization policies affect the domestic economy through their impact on prices of goods and services. Consequently these policies also can affect average productivity and lead to industrial restructuring. The main goal of this research is to estimate the distributional effects of trade policy at the micro level using household survey data and to determine whether trade liberalization affected different groups of poor people differently. To our knowledge this question has not yet been addressed for Tunisia.
Are the “Poor” Getting Globalised?
Globalization is under fire. Public perceptions and recent policy debates increasingly appear to indicate that trade liberalization has been accompanied by rising income inequality in developed and developing economies. The fact that trade liberalization creates both winners and losers has never been in question. While international trade enhances economic growth in the aggregate the distribution of its benefits may vary by income group location gender and the formal-informal divide.
Exporting, Importing and Wages in Africa: Evidence from Matched Employer-Employee data
The economic and social development of the African continent has been on the agenda of policy makers and the international community for decades. With over a billion inhabitants and the fastest growing population worldwide the African market presents an enormous potential. Despite remarkable economic growth rates however many countries on the continent struggle to translate this potential into significant improvements in socio-economic indicators. International trade is considered by many as one of the main contributors to reductions in poverty and the improvement of livelihoods (Dollar and Kraay 2004; Le Goff and Singh 2014). This stance has been adopted in global policy making with trade forming an integral part of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda of the United Nations. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) include the objective to double the share of least developed countries’ (LDC) exports in global exports by 2020. Thirty-four of the 48 LDCs are located on the African continent implying that this endeavor is particularly relevant for Africa.
Trade and Poverty Reduction: New Evidence of Impacts in Developing Countries: Introduction and Overview
In recent years there has been an intensification of the long-running debate on the effects of trade integration. This debate has focused largely on the impact of trade in advanced economies which has risked diverting attention away from the impact of trade on people’s lives in developing countries and especially the extreme poor. This volume brings together new research using a range of different analytical approaches that examines how the extreme poor have fared following trade liberalization in various developing countries and regions and the challenges that poor people face in benefitting from trade.
Trade Openness and Vulnerability to Poverty in Viet Nam under Doi Moi
Following the so-called “Asian option” of transition from the early 1990s Viet Nam adopted the Doi Moi (renovation) process a combination of liberalization stabilization and structural reforms. This included two main waves of trade liberalization one in the 1990s and a second in the 2000s (Coello at al. 2010). The first wave lasted from the initial opening of the country until approximately 2001 and foresaw the total abolition of trade licences and the removal of most quantitative restrictions (Thanh and Duong 2009). The second wave—still ongoing—includes the full involvement of the country in the global network of reciprocal trade agreements (both multilateral WTO accession in January 2007 and bilateral such as agreements signed with the United States in 2001 as well as FTA negotiations with the EU concluded in 2016).
Foreword
In 2015 the World Bank and the World Trade Organization published a flagship report on the role of trade in the effort to end poverty by 2030. Over the past three years the two organizations have collaborated in various ways to advance that goal from supporting implementation of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement; to assisting the poor including women and small-scale traders to take advantage of trade opportunities; to supporting trade reforms in the world’s poorest countries.
Glass Barriers: Constraints to Women’s Small-Scale,Cross-Border Trade in Cambodia and Lao PDR
Border checkpoints in developing countries often teem with traders transporting small quantities on foot or pushing carts alongside trucks that sport the insignia of formal companies. Those small-scale cross-border traders may eventually be superseded by larger import-export firms. But during the process of development their trade may be a valuable avenue for poverty alleviation and women’s empowerment. This chapter focuses on the latter in the context of small-scale cross-border trade in Cambodia and Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR). It analyzes recent survey research undertaken by the World Bank and draws conclusions about the key policy implications for facilitating the poverty-reducing impact of women’s participation in small-scale cross-border trade.