Would Freeing Up World Trade Reduce Poverty and Inequality? The Vexed Role of Agricultural Distortions

Trade policy reforms in recent decades have sharply reduced the distortions that were harming agriculture in developing countries, yet global trade in farm products continues to be far more distorted than trade in non‐farm goods. Those distortions reduce some forms of poverty and inequality but worsen others, so the net effects are unclear without empirical modelling. This article summarises a series of new economy‐wide global and national empirical studies that focus on the net effects of the remaining distortions to world merchandise trade on poverty and inequality globally and in various developing countries. The global Linkage model results suggest that removing those remaining distortions would reduce international inequality, largely by boosting net farm incomes and raising real wages for unskilled workers in developing countries, and would reduce the number of poor people worldwide by 3 per cent. The analysis based on the Global Trade Analysis Project model for a sample of 15 countries, and nine stand‐alone national case studies, all point to larger reductions in poverty, especially if only the non‐poor are subjected to increased income taxation to compensate for the loss of trade tax revenue.     

Undergraduate design learning in multiple partnerships: joinedupdesign for academies

This article reports research into undergraduate design learning through an off-campus partnership. The Sorrell Foundation’s Joinedupdesign for Academies programme involved partnerships between university design departments, ‘failing’ 11–18 schools and professional designers, in the context of a funding commitment to rebuild/renew school buildings in the UK, and an ideological commitment to remodel schools as ‘Academies’. We investigated the impact on 12 undergraduate Design students’ learning as they partnered pupils at two secondary schools in a live regeneration project, following both schools’ redesign/relaunch as ‘Academies’. Using a mixed methods case study approach, we report the acquisition of a wide range of employability skills, vital for professional designers, through an innovative learning model in which pupils act as clients. In terms of design education, these partnerships provided a rare and authentic exposure to the complex demands of publicly-funded work for undergraduate design students, and as such offer a new and potentially interesting model for experiential design education, which bridges campus and off-campus learning.     

Predictors of customer service training in hospitality firms

Small hospitality firms have a reluctance to embrace business improvement activities in general and customer service training in particular. In a survey of 255 hospitality firms, this study investigated a range of predictors for owner–managers to adopt specific customer service training activities, in a series of regression equations. It was found that, in general, those firms that placed more importance on customer service training were willing to take up more training activity. In addition, it was found that predictors for specific customer service training activities, such as benchmarking best practice or mystery shopping, varied between types of activity and with a general intention to consider customer service training.     

Agriculture's 'multifunctionality' and the WTO

Are the agricultural policy reforms embodied in the Uruguay Round consistent with meeting domestic policy objectives such as providing adequate food security, environmental protection and viability of rural areas? This article examines the claim that agriculture deserves more price support and import protection than other sectors because of the non‐marketed externalities and public goods it produces jointly with marketable food and fibre (agriculture’s so‐called ‘multifunctionality’). Do these unrewarded positive externalities exceed the negative externalities from farming by more than the net positive externalities produced by other sectors? To what extent are those farmer‐produced spillovers under‐supplied, and what are the most efficient ways to boost their production to the socially optimal levels? The article concludes that there is little trade‐off required to meet domestic policy objectives on the one hand and agricultural protection reform objectives as embodied in WTO rules on the other.     

The World Trade Organisation's Doha Cotton Initiative: A Tale of Two Issues

Four West African nations have demanded that the WTO's Doha Development Agenda include a Cotton Initiative that involves two issues: cutting cotton subsidies and tariffs, and assisting farm productivity growth in Africa. This paper provides estimates of the potential economic impacts of (a) complete or partial removal of cotton subsidies and import tariffs globally and (b) cotton productivity growth through the adoption of genetically modified (GM) cotton varieties. Use is made of the GTAP database and global economic model to address both these issues. On Doha, our results confirm that for cotton – unlike for other agricultural subsidies and tariffs – it is subsidy reductions rather than tariff cuts that would make by far the largest impact. For Sub‐Saharan Africa the potential gains are huge relative to the effects on that region of reforming other merchandise trade policies. And they could be more than doubled if that reform provided the cash for farmers to take advantage of the biotechnology revolution and adopt GM cotton varieties. But those potential gains, and the affordability of switching to costly GM seed, depend crucially on the extent to which high‐income countries are willing to lower domestic support to their cotton farmers.     

China and the international relocation of world textile and clothing activity

Zusammenfassung China und die internationale Verlagerung der Textil- und Bekleidungsindustrie. - Die chinesischen Wirtschaftsreformen seit den sp?ten 70er Jahren haben das Wachstum des chinesischen Au\enhandels erheblich stimuliert. Chinas Exporte arbeitsintensiver Erzeugnisse wie Textilien und Bekleidung erlebten einen Aufschwung und bewirkten, da\ die fortgeschritteneren der asiatischen Entwick-lungsl?nder ihre Exporte schneller in Richtung auf weniger arbeitsintensive Produkte wie synthetische Garne, Stoffe und Fasern entwickelten. Auf diese Weise übt China einen Druck auf die strukturelle Anpassung der Textil- und Bekleidungsindustrien in den Industriel?ndern aus, und zwar direkt (am arbeitsintensiven Ende des Spektrums) und indirekt über die asiatischen Schwellenl?nder (deren übergang zu kapitalintensiveren Aktivit?ten beschleunigt wird). Parallel zu diesem Beitrag Chinas zum Anstieg des ostasiatischen Anteils am Weltexport von Textilien und Bekleidung l?uft sein Beitrag zur steigenden Vorherrschaft Ostasiens bei den Importen von unverarbeiteter Wolle und Baumwolle. In welchem Umfang China weiterhin in dieser Weise fortf?hrt - und dabei seine eigene Volkswirtschaft entwickelt und st?rkt -, h?ngt in hohem Ma\e von ?nderungen der Importbeschr?nkungspolitik in den Industriel?ndern ab.

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Résumé La Chine et la relocation internationale des activités mondiales en textile et habillement. - Les réformes en politique économique chinoise depuis les années soixante-dix ont stimulé le commerce extérieur chinois. Les exportations chinoises des produits manufacturés intensifs à la main d’∄uvre comme par exemple des produits finis de textile et de l’habillement ont prospéré considérablement poussant les pays développants asiatiques plus avancés d’exporter des biens moins intensifs à la main d’∄uvre comme p.e. les fils synthétiques, les tissus et les fibres. Ainsi la Chine exerce des pressions d’ajustement structurel sur les industries de textile et de l’habillement dans les pays industriels avancés d’une manière directe (à la fin du spectre où il y a des biens intensifs à la main d’∄uvre) et indirecte via les PNI asiatiques (où le développement envers des activités plus intensives aux capitaux est accéléré). En même temps la Chine contribue beaucoup à la dominance montante de l’Asie de l’Est en importations mondiaux du coton pur et de la laine. La mesure avec laquelle la Chine continue à contribuer en telles manières - et ainsi à développer et fortifier son économie propre - dépend fortement des changements des politiques d’importation restrictives dans les pays industriels.

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Resumen La China y la reubicación international de la industria textil y de la confección de prendas de vestir. - Las reformas de política económica realizadas desde fines de la década del setenta estimularon el comercio international de China. Sus exportaciones de manufacturas intensivas en mano de obra como ser las de textiles y confección crecieron pronunciadamente, dando motivo a los países más avanzados del Asia para modificar su estructura de exportación en dirección hacia productos de menor intensidad laboral como ser hilos, tejidos y fibras sintéticas. Con ello China ejerce presión sobre las industrias textiles y de confección de los países industriales avanzados, tanto en forma directa (en el lado del espectro con alta intensidad en mano de obra) como indirecta a través de los NICs asiáticos (cuyo énfasis en actividades intensivas en capital es fomentado), con el fin de lograr un reajuste estructural. Paralelamente a esta contribución de China al crecimiento de la participatión del Este asiático en las exportaciones mundiales de productos textiles y de confección, China contribuye al aumento de la importancia del Este asiático como importador de algodón natural y lana. La medida en la cual China continuará contribuyendo - y de esta mariera desarrollando y fortaleciendo su propia economía - depende ante todo de las politicas de importación restrictivas de los paises industriales.

     

Will the people united in cyberspace never be defeated? Reflections on the global multitude in the epoch of American Empire

This paper examines Hardt and Negri's (Empire, 2000, and Multitude, 2004) approach to the genealogy of modern resistance. It critically examines their three guiding principles for successful resistance. The first principle involves using a simple measure of efficacy regarding the specific historical situation. According to this principle every organisation must somehow grasp the possibilities offered by the current arrangement of opposing forces. The second principle requires all “forms” of political and military organization to equate with the current forms of economic and social production. According to this principle all forms of resistance movements must evolve in coordination with the evolution of economic forms. The third principle requires that democracy and freedom act as guides to the development of organizational forms of resistance.Hardt and Negri were certain that the most evolved, emblematic form of technocratic, cyberspace Empire contains “swarm intelligence” the instrument of its own destruction: “[T]he distributed networked structure provides the model for an absolutely democratic organisation that corresponds to the dominant forms of economic and social production and is also the most powerful weapon against the ruling power structure” [Hardt M, Negri A. Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire. New York: Penguin Press; 2004, p. 88]. This paper proposes that such a sanguine appraisal of the forms and strategies of contemporary capitalism belies (or forecloses) hope for any type of resistance. The flexible, distributed “perfect union” expressed in the presumed symbiotic relationship between Empire and the Global Multitude has no clothes [see Passavant P, Dean J, editors. Empire's new clothes: reading Hardt and Negri. NewYork: Routledge; 2004] and resistance, especially the resistance involving the integration of the political and the economic, requires not integrative “swarm intelligence” but the relentless destruction of the enveloping falsifications and futile illusions of dis–embodied, virtual, networked, “global” capitalism and its uncivil appropriation of democracy and the commons.     

Food Price Policy in East Asia

The primary objective of this survey is to examine the extent to which the available empirical literature suggests that economies of East Asia are following the policy trend of earlier industrialising economies in gradually changing from taxing to assisting food producers in the course of their economic development. More specifically, the survey attempts (a) to summarise the trends in agricultural incentives in East Asia; (b) to examine briefly the literature on motivations for those policy trends; and (c) to mention some of the future trade and policy implications.     

Will China's WTO accession worsen farm household incomes?

Many fear China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) will impoverish its farmers via greater import competition in its agricultural markets. We explore that possibility bearing in mind that, even if producer prices of some (land-intensive) farm products fall, prices of other (labor-intensive) farm and nonfarm products could rise. New estimates, from the global, economy-wide numerical simulation model known as Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), of the likely changes in agricultural and other product prices as a result of WTO accession, are drawn on to examine empirically the real income implications of China's WTO accession. The results suggest farm–nonfarm income inequality may well rise within China but rural–urban income inequality need not. The article concludes with some policy suggestions for alleviating any pockets of farm household poverty that may emerge as a result of WTO accession.