What kinds of changes in foreign competition lead domestic industries to seek import protection? To address this question this paper uses detailed monthly U.S. import data to investigate changes in import composition during a 24-month window immediately preceding the filing of a petition for protection.
... 更多显示 A decomposition methodology allows a comparison of imports from two groups of countries supplying the same product: those that are named in the petition and those that are not. The same decomposition can be applied to products quite similar to the imports in question, but not subject to a petition. The results suggest that industries typically seek protection when faced with a specific pattern of shocks. First, a persistent positive relative supply shock favors imports from named countries. Second, a negative demand shock hits imports from all sources just prior to domestic industries' petition for protection. The relative supply shock is a broad one; it applies both to named commodities and to the comparison product group. The import demand shock, by contrast, is narrow, hitting only named products. The latter shock is also large: import growth over the two-year window is 15 percentage points lower in named products than in reference products, with most of this gap arising in the final two quarters before the petition. The negative import demand shock appears to be a key event in the run-up to the filing of a petition. It has been missed by previous studies using more aggregated data.
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This report presents a summary of the projected global economic growth for 2014. Global growth is projected to accelerate at a greater rate in 2014 than the previous year.
... 更多显示 Much of the initial acceleration reflects a pick-up in high-income country growth, which after years of extreme weakness and outright recessions, appear to be finally emerging from the global financial crisis. Although developing country growth in 2013 was relatively weak, it has been improving, partly reflecting strengthening growth in high-income countries, but also a recovery from earlier weakness in large middle-income countries, such as India and China. However, prospects will be sensitive to market reactions to quantitative easing withdrawal. On a positive note, strengthening trade is expected to be a bolstering factor.
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This paper aims at assessing the impact of migration on export performance and more particularly the effect of African migrants on African trade.
... 更多显示 Relying on a new data set on international bilateral migration recently released by the World Bank spanning from 1980 to 2010, the authors estimate a gravity model that deals satisfactorily with endogeneity. The results first indicate that the pro-trade effect of migration is higher for African countries, a finding that can be partly explained by the substitution between migrants and institutions (the existence of migrant networks compensating for weak contract enforcement, for instance). This positive association is particularly important for the exports of differentiated products, suggesting that migrants also play an important role in reducing information costs. Moreover, focusing on intra-African trade, the pro-trade effect of African migrants is larger when migrants are established in a more geographically and ethnically distant country. All these findings highlight the ability of African migrants to help overcome some of the main barriers to African trade: the weakness of institutions, information costs, cultural differences, and lack of trust.
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政策研究报告 WPS6739 2014年1月1日
Ehrhart, Helene; Le Goff, Maelan; Rocher?, Emmanuel; Singh, Raju Jan
This paper surveys political-economic research on the variety of instruments that governments use to conduct international trade policy. It presents key insights on the relationships between instruments such as tariffs, quotas, voluntary export restraints, and other nontariff barriers, as well as the ebb and flow of the national use of temporary trade barriers such as antidumping, countervailing duties, and safeguards.
... 更多显示 The survey examines trends in use of these trade policy instruments over recent history; and it reviews the major theoretical and empirical explanations behind, and interrelationships between, their uses. Finally, the paper highlights potential institutional impacts of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and subsequent World Trade Organization (WTO) on choice of policy instruments, as well as how multilateral, unilateral, and preferential tariff liberalization may introduce political-economic shocks and affect incentives over time for how governments rely on different instruments.
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The paper analyzes the relationship between country size and the use of imported intermediate inputs by firms in 76 developing countries. Recent evidence indicates that the use of imported inputs can have a large, positive effect on productivity and growth, thus motivating a better understanding of the determinants of foreign inputs.
... 更多显示 The results confirm that, as is the case with exports, use of imported intermediate inputs is much higher at the extensive and intensive margins in small relative to large countries. The results for imported inputs are comparable in magnitude with those for exports.
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The trade facilitation agenda represents an important opportunity for countries to not only realize economic development and poverty reduction goals, but also deepen regional integration.
... 更多显示 The improvement or creation of trade corridors and the harmonization of requirements across national borders facilitate transit and significantly improve regional market integration. The trust fund (TF) for trade facilitation for regional integration in Central America was designed to support the region in improving its trade facilitation environment. It was financed by the trade facilitation facility, a multi-donor TF that helps developing countries improve competitiveness through concrete improvements in trade facilitation systems and reducing trade costs. It assisted in the implementation of the technical needs and policy recommendations that emerged from focused analytical work and from the complementary agenda of the Dominican Republic and Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) and the Bank's aid-for-trade strategy. The TF program foresaw four components: (i) development of performance indicators and benchmarking framework to measure progress on trade facilitation; (ii) establishment of foundations to move towards single window merchandise clearing; (iii) strengthening and standardization of quality and phyto-sanitary controls; and (iv) improving the trading capacity of small market participants. In addition, the TF promoted regional dialogue and consensus on issues related to trade facilitation.
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This paper uses mirror statistics and research in the field to estimate the magnitude of Tunisia's informal trade with Libya and Algeria. The aim is to assess the scale of this trade and to evaluate the amount lost in taxes and duties as a result as well as to assess the local impact in terms of income generation.
... 更多显示 The main findings show that within Tunisian trade as a whole, informal trade accounts for only a small share (5 percent of total imports). However, informal trade represents an important part of the Tunisia's bilateral trade with Libya and Algeria, accounting for more than half the official trade with Libya and more than total official trade with Algeria. The main reasons behind this large-scale informal trade are differences in the levels of subsidies on either side of the border as well as the varying tax regimes. Tackling informal trade is not simply a question of stepping up the number of controls and sanctions, because differences in prices lead to informal trade (and to an increase in corruption levels among border officials) even in cases where the sanctions are severe. As local populations depend on cross-border trade for income generation, they worry about local authorities taking action against cross-border trade. At the same time, customs officials are concerned about the risk of local protests if they strictly enforce the tariff regimes in place. This issue will become even more significant if fuel prices in Tunisia rise again as a result of a reduction in the levels of domestic subsidies.
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政策研究报告 WPS6731 2013年12月1日
Ayadi, Lotfi; Benjamin, Nancy; Bensassi, Sami; Raballand, Gael
It is argued that compared with large countries, small countries rely more on trade and therefore they are more likely to adopt liberal trading policies.
... 更多显示 The present paper extends this idea beyond the conventional trade openness measures by analyzing the relationship between country size and the number of documents required to export and import, a measure of trade facilitation. Three important results follow. First, trade facilitation does improve as country size becomes smaller; that is, small countries perform better than large countries in terms of trade facilitation. Second, the relationship between country size and trade facilitation is nonlinear, much stronger for the relatively small than the large countries. Third, contrary to what existing studies might suggest, the relationship between country size and trade facilitation does not appear to be driven by the fact that small countries trade more as a proportion of their gross domestic product than the large countries.
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Recent years have seen a surge in economic integration agreements (EIAs) and the development of non-tariff measures (NTMs). As a consequence, a growing number of EIAs include provisions on NTMs.
... 更多显示 However, little attention has been given in the literature to the effects of NTM liberalization in the context of EIAs. In this paper, we focus on provisions for technical regulations and analyze whether the North-South harmonization of technical barriers affects international trade. Using a gravity equation, it tests whether, as a result of the deep integration associated with standards provisions included in the EIA, the Southern partners' trade expands with the North, but at the expense of their trade with non-bloc Southern partners. Empirical results provide strong support for this conjecture. Moreover, harmonization on the basis of regional standards negatively impacts the exports of developing countries to the North.
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Entering and successfully surviving in export markets is a costly process for firms. The process involves learning about the existence of foreign demand, "discovering" production costs of exportable goods, building up reputation, succeeding in product branding to reduce competitive pressures and to be constantly upgrading quality standards to better serve demanding international clients, and remaining competitive vis-à-vis other players in the global marketplace.
... 更多显示 This paper argues that tourism can help alleviate some of these costs by providing a relatively inexpensive platform for cost-discovery and by acting as a low-cost "in-house" trade fair, accessible to all domestic producers. The analysis combines product-level data on world and Nepal's exports (both for goods that are related and unrelated to tourism) with Nepalese data on tourist inflows and expenditures and macro indicators on relative prices. For tourism-related goods, the analysis reveals a positive association between tourist inflows from given destinations and their expenditures, with future merchandise exports to those destinations. Instead, for goods a priori unrelated to tourism, the data reveal no connection between tourism flows and future exports. The results suggest spillovers from tourism into merchandise export performance and diversification and would imply that there are gains from cooperation between tourism and export promotion agencies.
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Entering and successfully surviving in export markets is a costly process for firms. Key steps for success include learning about the existence of foreign demand, determining the production costs of exportable goods, building a high-quality reputation, succeeding in product branding to reduce competitive pressures, constant upgrading of quality standards to better serve demanding international clients, and remaining competitive with other players in the global marketplace.
... 更多显示 Drawing on the findings of recent research (Reis and Varela 2013), this note argues that tourism can help alleviate some of these costs by providing a relatively inexpensive platform for cost discovery and acting as a low-cost in-house trade fair, accessible to all domestic producers. Combining product-level data on the world's and Nepal's exports (for goods that are both related and unrelated to tourism) with Nepalese data on tourist inflows and expenditures and macro indicators on relative prices results in a positive association between tourist inflows from given destinations and their expenditures with future merchandise exports of tourist-related products to those destinations. For goods previously unrelated to tourism, data reveal no connection between tourism flows and their future exports. The spillovers from tourism into merchandise export performance and diversification imply that there are gains to be had from cooperation between tourism and export promotion activities.
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On September 25, 2013, the Committee on Governance and Executive Directors' Administrative Matters (COGAM) endorsed Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA's) proposal of a new framework for developing, issuing, managing, and disseminating regulatory documents for MIGA (MIGA policy and procedure (P & P) framework).
... 更多显示 The purpose of the MIGA P & P framework is to organize MIGA's P & P documents in a more efficient and user-friendly manner and to create a searchable repository to facilitate their storage and access. The MIGA P & P framework is consistent with the P & P frameworks of the Bank and International Finance Corporation (IFC) in terms of categorization, design, and other aspects. MIGA coordinated with the Bank and IFC in developing the MIGA P&P framework and will continue to collaborate with them during the implementation process. This paper provides an update on the implementation of the MIGA P&P framework. It summarizes: (a) the actions taken since Board approval of the MIGA P&P framework, and (b) the MIGA P&P framework implementation plan, including completion date targets for each task.
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Ratings for the Trade Development Facility (TDF) Project for Lao People's Democratic Republic were as follows: outcomes were satisfactory; risk to development outcome was moderate; Bank performance was highly satisfactory and grantee performance was also highly satisfactory.
... 更多显示 Some lessons learned includes: reform momentum needs to be maintained once the goal of World Trade Organization (WTO) accession has been achieved. A key lesson that has been learned from reform experiences in other countries that have acceded to the WTO is that momentum can be lost once the incentive of accession is removed. Translating reforms into results takes time. The time it takes to implement institutional reforms, and for those reforms to translate into results that are visible to the private sector can be long and uncertain. The complexity of moving to a full program based approach will be taxing on the implementation team. This will require continued and deepened investments in capacity development for the long term, as well as continued partnerships with initiatives financed outside the TDF. Better quality of project at entry will permit a better allocation of resources; avoid implementation delays, and complex and lengthy negotiations with potential beneficiaries. It is very important to make the most of political commitment to reform. Support for improving the overall business environment has a greater chance of success than selectively supporting priority sectors. Be flexible, not dogmatic in component design and implementation and adjust to the concerns of the beneficiaries.
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This paper examines trade policies in Peru and Argentina since the reforms of the 1990s. Peru provides a valuable example of sustaining reform.
... 更多显示 Leaders have used negotiations and other international instruments to disseminate among Peruvians a positive vision of Peru in the international economy and to extend the application of World Trade Organization-based governance principles. Peru has introduced few new restrictions and all of them have been through World Trade Organization-sanctioned policy instruments. Argentina, by contrast, has introduced multiple restrictions, through procedures that eschew World Trade Organization governance principles. Moreover, leaders there have returned trade politics to the dependencia philosophy that sees the international economy as an exploitive environment. The paper brings out the weakness of international obligations to limit Argentina's return to import substitution and the pains at which Peru has gone to maintain the management of its economy within the same rules that Argentina has so easily violated.
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政策研究报告 WPS6610 2013年9月1日
Baracat, Elias A.; Finger, J. Michael; Thorne, Raul Leon; Nogues, Julio J.