Economic Partnership Agreements Between Sub‐Saharan Africa and the EU: A Development Perspective

This paper draws on Hinkle and Schiff (2003). It analyses the planned Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the EU and Sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) from a development perspective. It does not take a position on whether SSA should enter into EPAs with the EU. Rather, it starts from the notion that the process of forming EPAs is unlikely to be reversed and examines the conditions that will maximise SSA's benefits from the EPAs. If this notion is correct, then the analysis presented in the paper applies. On the other hand, Pascal Lamy, the EU Trade Commissioner, made a proposal at the May 2004 G‐90 summit in Dakar that might lead to a change in the EPA process. He proposed that the G‐90, a group consisting of ACP and non‐ACP LDC countries, should not have to make concessions at the WTO Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations, i.e., he proposed a ‘free round’ for the G‐90. This proposal opens the door to the possibility that the same might apply to the ACP countries in the EU‐ACP negotiations and that the EPA process might be reversed. The paper considers the key issues raised by the planned EPAs, their relationship to the WTO's Doha Round and the EU's Everything‐but‐Arms Initiative, the changes needed to make the EPAs internally consistent, the domestic reforms in SSA that would need to accompany trade liberalisation in both goods and services, and the potential effects of the EPAs on regional integration in SSA. The EPAs will pose a number of policy challenges for SSA countries, including: restructuring of indirect tax systems, reduction of MFN tariffs, liberalisation of service imports on an MFN basis and related regulatory reforms in the services sector, and liberalisation of trade in both goods and services within the regional trading blocs in SSA. The paper also finds that the EPAs provide an opportunity to accelerate regional and global trade integration in SSA. To realise the potential development benefits of the planned EPAs, two steps are essential. First, the EU must, as it has stated, truly treat the EPAs as instruments of development, subordinating its commercial interests in the agreements to the development needs of SSA. Second, the SSA countries need to implement a number of EPA‐related trade policy reforms. However, the latter is far from certain, given the lack of reform momentum in SSA.     

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Ohne ZusammenfassungÜbersetzt von Gerhard Tintner, WienÜbersetzt von Ragnar Nurkse, z. Zt. Wienaus dem Italienischen übersetzt von Dr. Hans Fried, WienÜbersetzt von Paul Brüll, Wien.Aus dem Italienischen übersetzt von Dr. Hans Fried.     

Einzelbesprechungen

Ohne ZusammenfassungÜbersetzt von Paul Brüll     

Einzelbesprechungen

Ohne ZusammenfassungAus dem Italienischen übersetzt von M. St. Braun, WienAus dem Russischen übersetzt von A. GerschenkronAus dem Italienischen übersetzt von Erich Allina     

Regional Integration as Diplomacy

Regional integration agreements are examples of second-bestpolicies and have an ambiguous impact on welfare. This articlebuilds a model in which regional integration agreements unambiguouslyraise welfare by correcting for externalities. It assumes thattrade between neighboring countries raises trust between themand reduces the likelihood of conflict. The optimum interventionin that case is a subsidy on imports from the neighbor. Thearticle shows that an equivalent solution is for the neighboringcountries to tax imports from the rest of the world—thatis, to form a regional integration agreement—togetherwith some domestic taxes. The article shows that (1) the optimum tariffs on imports fromthe rest of the world are likely to decline over time; (2) deepintegration implies lower optimum external tariffs if it isexogenous; (3) optimum external tariffs are higher before deepintegration and lower thereafter if deep integration is endogenous;and (4) enlargement of bloc size (in terms of symmetric countries)has an ambiguous impact on external tariffs but raises welfare,and some form of domino effect exists.     

Einzelbesprechungen

Ohne ZusammenfassungAus dem Italienischen übersetzt von M. St. Braun, WienAus dem Italienischen übersetzt von E. Allina, WienAus dem Russischen übersetzt von A. GerschenkronÜbersetzt von Paul Brüll, Wien.     

North-South and South-South trade-related technology diffusion: an industry-level analysis of direct and indirect effects

Abstract .  This paper examines one direct and three indirect channels of North-South trade-related technology diffusion. We find that i) the largest impact on TFP in the South is from direct North-South technology diffusion; ii) there are also significant effects from indirect North-South technology diffusion, though their magnitude is smaller than that of the direct one; and iii) the impact of direct North-South technology diffusion on TFP in the South occurs faster than the impact of indirect technology diffusion.     

The Impact of Two-Tier Producer and Consumer Food Pricing in India

India's government buys wheat, rice, and sugar at below themarket price and then sells it in ration shops in the urbanand rural areas. The rest is sold in the open market. This createsa two-tier price system for consumers and producers. Supportersof the government's procurement policy claim that it raisesthe open-market price so much that it increases the sales-weightedaverage of the rationed price and the open-market price; inthat case, both the farm sector as a whole and low-income urbanconsumers with access to the ration shops gain, and high-incomeurban consumers who buy at the open-market price lose. Thisview has provided an intellectual basis for the policy. This article examines a variety of cases: with and without rationing;with rationing through ration cards or queuing; with and withoutaccess by the urban rich to the ration shops; with or withoutfree trade; and with a marketable surplus having either positive,negative, or zero price elasticity. The impact of the policyon the average price is in general ambiguous or negative. Underthe most plausible assumptions, it is negative, implying thatfarmers as a whole lose from the procurement policy.