Aid for trade and international transactions in goods and services

The empirical literature on aid for trade (AfT) mainly considers its effects on merchandise trade and investment. In this paper, we provide an in‐depth analysis of the relationship between AfT and trade in services using both aggregate and bilateral data. We find a statistically weak effect of AfT on both goods and services trade in our aggregate analysis once we account for endogeneity in the AfT–trade relationship. In contrast, the bilateral analysis suggests that AfT, in particular that allocated to services activities, especially economic infrastructure, has a positive effect on recipients’ merchandise exports to donor countries. This novel finding is robust across different lag structures and provides evidence of complementarities between services AfT and goods trade.     

Agriculture and the WTO: Next Steps

The potential welfare gains from further liberalizing agricultural markets are shown in this paper to be huge, both absolutely and relative to gains from liberalizing textiles or other manufacturing, according to new simulation results of the Global Trade Analysis Project. The probability of the WTO delivering sizeable farm protection cuts in the next round of multilateral trade negotiations would be greater if industrial and service sector negotiations were undertaken simultaneously as part of a comprehensive new round. The immediate challenge for analysts and negotiators is to identify and assess feasible policy packages that facilitate genuine agricultural reform rather than encourage inefficient re-instrumentation of farm support measures. Such assessment will require significant improvements in both analytical tools and databases.     

Special and Differential Treatment of Developing Countries in the WTO: Moving Forward After Cancún

The issue of special and differential treatment (SDT) for developing countries in the WTO has become a source of tension in North‐South trade relations. The absence of an effective SDT regime clearly contributed to the failure of the Cancún Ministerial meeting of the WTO. This paper argues for a new approach that puts the emphasis on efforts to improve the development relevance of WTO rules and create mechanisms which allow greater differentiation across WTO members in determining the applicability of WTO disciplines; complemented by non‐discriminatory liberalisation of trade in goods and services in which developing countries have an export interest. The former is key in allowing the WTO to expand its reach to new ‘behind the border’ policies; and the latter is important to establishing a development dimension in multilateral trade negotiations.     

Revitalising Multilateral Trade Governance

The WTO provides extensive flexibility for members to engage with each other. Using this, WTO members should identify a road map for the future and a work programme to update and expand the rulebook to address trade-distorting nontariff policies that are not or only partially covered by current WTO rules.Expanding the WTO rulebook, accepting greater reciprocity and improving the organisation’s operation are necessary for revitalising the WTO.     

Trade Wars and the World Trade Organization: Causes,Consequences, and Change

The rise in trade tensions and launch of a trade war by the USA is in part a result of World Trade Organization (WTO) working practices that have impeded the ability to use the organization to address the underlying sources of conflict through dialogue, analysis, and rule‐making. Open plurilateral agreements between the major protagonists offer an avenue for revitalizing the ability of the WTO to resolve trade conflicts. More generally, reform of WTO working practices is needed for the organization to be more effective in providing a platform for members to cooperate on trade policy matters.     

Imports, entry and competition law as market disciplines

Numerous countries have adopted or strengthened competition laws in the past two decades. At the same time, domestic industries in most countries are facing ever more intense pressure from imports. In this paper we study the impact of competition law on domestic competition for a large number of countries over time, controlling for the presence of imports and the number of domestic firms. We find that while industries that have higher import exposure or larger numbers of domestic firms tend to be more competitive, the direct effect of competition law on competition is insignificant. However, we also find that industries that operate under a competition law tend to have a larger number of domestic firms. This suggests that competition laws may have an indirect effect on domestic competition by promoting entry.     

DOHA,DEVELOPMENT AND DISCRIMINATION*

Abstract. Two distinct challenges confront WTO members – whether to ‘save’ the WTO’– that is, a multilateral trading system that is based on non‐discrimination and most favoured nation liberalization – and if so, how to do so, and determining what role the WTO should play in attaining (pursuing) national development objectives. This paper explores whether moves to achieve the first objective will help achieve the latter, and whether specific actions to pursue more seriously economic development objectives through the WTO could help move the system closer to achieving the goal of non‐discrimination.     

Economic development and the WTO: Back to basics?

Conclusion  An effective WTO is critical for developing countries —the alternatives, bilateral and regional agreements, will give rise to trade diversion and discrimination, and most likely exclude sectors such as agriculture and policies such as antidumping. Developing countries have a strong incentive to put together an agenda that offers potential benefits to OECD countries as well as themselves. The Singapore issues are arguably not necessary to move forward on the market access agenda. There is huge scope to trade “concessions” on tariffs — both applied rates and tariff binding. The same is true for access to service markets. A refocused effort centered on market access, complemented by an emphasis on transparency predictability and reciprocity, could help realize the development promise of the Doha round. The views expressed are personal and should not be attributed to the World Bank.