中国参与WTO贸易援助所面临的问题评析

贸易援助是官方发展援助的重要形式,中国在WTO贸易援助倡议的启动、后续工作及实际参与中起到了积极作用。中国国际经济地位的转变让其他国家产生更高的援助期待。发达国家对发展中国家提供的贸易援助是其应当承担的国际义务。"南南合作"是发展中国家之间的互助合作形式,其本质是基于平等理念的合作,是贸易援助的补充形式。中国在力所能及的条件下应当尽量与发展中国家开展"南南合作"并在此过程中提供适当援助。完善对外援助法律制度是顺利开展贸易援助、实现援助目的的保障。     

The concept of absorptive capacity: Origins,content and practical relevance

Ever since the end of the Second World War there have been regular calls for a comprehensive and extensive “Marshall Plan” for Third World countries. One of the most popular lines of counter-argument is that developing countries do not even possess the necessary absorptive capacity to make effective use of larger international transfers of purchasing power. On the strength of this “Low Absorptive Capacity Thesis”, as S.P. Schatz called it in 1961¹, a politically unpleasant prlblem, yet one which represents a question of principle in development policy, has for years been dismissed or passed on to the fundamental planning departments of development aid institutions and to the representatives of science and research. What exactly lies behind this problem?     

The trade with developing countries

The classic view of the theory of foreign trade that unfettered international exchanges of goods enhance the economic welfare of all participating nations is gaining more and more ground in the discussions about development policy. Since past experience has shown capital aid alone to be incapable of lessening the prosperity differential between the North and the South, the “Aid by Trade“ strategy is now of increasing importance. There is however no panacea which would embrace the developing countries more closely in the international goods exchanges.     

Western aid and trade policy trends

The Third Development Decade of the United Nations opened with a promising outlook for the developing countries. The economic situation of the OECD countries had improved during 1979 and the “North-South dialogue” seemed to be making progress. But the further course of 1980 and the subsequent years revealed that the extent and long-term effects of the slump in world economic activity had been seriously underestimated. A large number of developing countries continue to be heavily dependent on development aid. The following article outlines current trends in aid and the likely prospects for the future.     

The trade with developing countries

The classic view of the theory of foreign trade that unfettered international exchanges of goods enhance the economic welfare of all participating nations is gaining more and more ground in the discussions about development policy. Since past experience has shown capital aid alone to be incapable of lessening the prosperity differential between the North and the South, the “Aid by Trade“ strategy is now of increasing importance. There is however no panacea which would embrace the developing countries more closely in the international goods exchanges.

     

Aid,trade and migration: How do bilateral flows interact?

This paper takes as its point of departure the European Commission's position, set out in 2005, which laid clear emphasis on aid and trade as tools for controlling immigration. We attempt to subject this position to empirical investigation. We exploit data on bilateral aid, trade and migration flows between developed and developing countries, for the period 2000–10, adopting an instrumental variable approach to address the endogeneity issue due to potential simultaneity bias. Our results establish that increasing aid and trade with developing countries is likely to fail to contain immigration, at least in the short run. The pattern of results is consistent with the hypothesis that promoting development in migrant‐sending countries, or cooperating with such countries to control migration outflows, is not sufficient to lessen immigration. Increasing visa restrictions and controls at borders is generally controversial; still, the results imply that policymakers cannot attain their short‐term immigration goals with the so‐called smart solutions of aid and trade.     

Innovative Sources of Development Finance: Global Cooperation in the Twenty‐first Century

This paper argues that in view of the resource crunch confronting many developing countries and the fall in overseas development aid flows to them, new sources of development finance need to be found. We consider international taxes, fees and levies that could considerably augment aid flows to developing countries and some of which may have coincident beneficial effects. Estimates of the revenue yield from such taxes and levies are also presented. The paper proposes the establishment of a ‘world development organisation’ to coordinate such effort. A formula for voting within the organisation and another for disbursal of such aid are suggested.     

Progress in German development assistance

A few months ago, Dr Eppler took over the ministry responsible for German development aid. The new minister considers development aid an important instrument for the international détente, which is to facilitate cooperation between peoples and which, in the long run, will guarantee world peace. Decisive for the carrying-through of aid measures is not a possible advantage for the donor countries, but only the benefit resulting for the developing countries. For this aim, steadily growing aid contributions do by no means suffice. What is necessary is rather a careful qualitative selection of measures and an improvement in their organisational prosecution.     

Savings mobilisation in developing countries

Stagnating development aid and continued reluctance on the part of western commercial banks to grant new loans to problem debtor countries have led many developing countries to pay greater attention to the mobilisation of their own resources. This article outlines a strategy for increasing the extent to which domestic savings are made available for development financing.     

Trade Fair for developing countries

It is six years now that the first Import Trade Fair called “Partners of Progress” has been staged in Berlin. Its original form was that of a pure aid to information, but following actual needs, it gradually changed into a commercial trade fair of the developing countries. The number of exhibitors taking part in these fairs, and the growing interest shown by more and more expert visitors, have both made it clear that this kind of trade show has gained a firm position among German trade fairs and specialised exhibitions. We have asked Dr M. Busche, authorised signatory of the Berlin Exhibition Service (Ausstallungs-Dienst Berlin: ADB), about his experiences with the import show, “Partners of Progress”, which is designed exclusively for the promotion of imports from African, Asian, and Latin American developing countries.     

Developments in the international distribution of income

The question of income distribution played a very important role in practical and theoretical development policy during the seventies. World market conditions were blamed for the fact that the income gap between industrialised countries and developing countries was widening. The demands to which this has given rise range from calls for “greater reliance on market forces”, “modification of the market form” and “greater market intervention” to insistence on the complete abolition of free market relationships. How has the relative income position of various groups of developing countries evolved in the last few decades?     

Demographic implications of autocentric development

The German politicologist Dieter Senghaas reached in his recently published book¹ the conclusion that the attempt to integrate the developing countries with the international economic system as it exists at present is bound to work out to the detriment of the developing countries — that it can only result in their “structural disablement“². Dissociation from the present system of international division of labour and origination of an “autocentric development“ offered to the developing countries their only chance of arresting the previously analysed deformation process and embarking on genuine development³. This model however comes up against demographic obstacles.     

Land reform in India

The favourable harvest yields of past years in developing countries have in Europe evoked the rumour of a “green revolution”. But the problems with which developing countries are confronted have by no means been solved by the, mainly technological, changes. In view of this development it is now more than ever before the right time to tackle the many agricultural problems.     

Trade and development expectations of LDCs

The developing countries are likely to use UNCTAD III to vent their disappointment at this institution’s failure in the past to find a satisfactory solution for the questions of trade and development policy which are of interest to them. The great expectations of the developing countries have in fact been left essentially unfulfilled in regard to development aid, lower trade barriers and grant of preferential tariffs for manufactured and semi-manufactured products as well as in the difficult area of raw material policy.     

The economic,social and political prerequisites of development

Whether development aid promises to be successful depends not least on the conditions prevalling in the developing countries themselves. A study commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation has examined whether it is possible to identify universal requirements for successful development in Third World countries. Its main findings are presented below.     

Automatic transfer payments to developing countries

As a more critical view is being taken of traditional development aid concepts, alternative means of advancing the resource transfer between industrialized and developing countries have attracted increasing attention in recent years. A system of tendentially automated transfer payments to developing countries is one of these alternatives. The author of the following article examines whether such a system has a chance of meeting common interests of industrialized and developing countries and how it could be elaborated to make it more effective.     

The efficiency reducing effects of official development aid

Despite considerable disbursements of official development aid the average annual per capita income in developing countries has increased only slightly. The prosperity gap between these countries and the industrialised nations has widened. In many cases the least degree of progress has been made in those countries receiving most support in proportion to their national income. Has the channelling of vast sums of official development aid turned out to be a failure? Or has it indeed hindered the development it set out to achieve?     

WTO贸易援助制度构建的必要性研究

贸易援助作为WTO的一项倡议,在其实施4年以来暴露出许多不足之处,且该倡议实施期限具有不确定性。贸易援助可以帮助发展中国家克服各种阻碍贸易的限制性约束,充分发挥贸易对于经济增长和降低贫困的重要作用,必须长期开展贸易援助。WTO作为全球性贸易组织,决定贸易援助只有在WTO体系内才能更为有效、全面、根本的展开。为使贸易援助长期实施并解决目前贸易援助倡议中存在的问题,必须在WTO体系内构建贸易援助制度。     

Does Aid for Trade Enhance Export Performance? Investigating the Infrastructure Channel

There are few empirical studies assessing the effectiveness of aid for trade as regards trade performance. Furthermore, existing work does not test which are the channels through which aid for trade has an impact on trade performance. We address this question using a two‐step empirical analysis. Relying on an export performance model, we first test whether institutions and infrastructure, our two potential channels of transmission, are significant determinants of export performance. Second, we test the impact of aid for trade sectoral flows on the previously detected determinants of export performance. We show, as part of the first step, that the infrastructure channel is a highly significant determinant of export performance, whereas the institutional channel turns out to have a limited positive impact on developing countries’ export performance. Furthermore, we show, from the second step, that aid for infrastructure, once instrumented, has a strong and positive impact on the infrastructure level. As a result, we find that a ten per cent increase in aid for infrastructure commitments per capita in developing countries leads to an average 2.34 per cent increase in the exports over GDP ratio. It is also equivalent to a 2.71 per cent reduction in tariff and nontariff barriers. These results highlight the high potential impact of aid for trade on developing countries’ export performance throughout the infrastructure channel.