This is a statement by Mr. Xiaozhun Yi, Deputy Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) at the eighty-ninth meeting of the Development Committee held on April 12, 2014.
... 更多显示 The WTO forecasts world merchandise trade to grow by some 4.7 percent in 2014, developing (including emerging) economies' trade flows still outpacing that of developing countries'. With their imports growing faster than their exports since the financial crisis, developing countries pull the developed countries' recovery, and contribute to reduce global imbalances.
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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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Real growth in global trade has decelerated significantly since its sharp recovery in 2010. Year-on-year growth in global real trade1 decelerated from 13.3 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2010, to 9.9, 3.1, and 0.5 percent at the end of the first quarters of 2011, 2012, and 2013, respectively, while picking back up to 3.9 percent in the year leading up to the fourth quarter of 2013.
... 更多显示 This aggregate deceleration in global trade includes absolute declines in real trade for many product categories and regions. In the wake of the great trade collapse of 2008-9, understanding of the behavior of trade in slowdowns has improved. Among the many explanations offered for the great trade collapse, including explanations related to uncertainty, trade financing, and new protectionist measures by governments, there has been a significant focus on whether the emergence of global value chains (GVCs) in international trade, and their behavior, are a contributing factor in trade slowdowns.
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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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Press coverage of the Egyptian revolution, both local and international, made frequent use of the word "inequality" to describe one of the factors that generated discontent.
... 更多显示 During the current transitional phase, two of the themes that are inspiring popular debates and political parties in the making are the questions of social justice and equality. Indeed, one of the puzzling aspects of this malaise about inequality is that the measurement of monetary inequality in the Arab Republic of Egypt by means of household surveys does not seem to match perceptions. The purpose of this study is to begin to elucidate this puzzle and provide a better understanding of income inequality in Egypt in its various dimensions. The authors have done this by first reviewing the literature on inequality in Egypt so as to put the study into context and better understand how inequality and the interest for inequality have evolved over the past 60 years. The authors tried to disentangle the global and spatial dimension of inequality by putting Egypt in its regional and global context and by delving into the complex structure of spatial inequality. This part of the study unveils some interesting features of inequality across areas, regions, and people. The authors reassessed the facts about income inequality by evaluating the quality of Egyptian data and by re-estimating all inequality figures. This analysis is followed by an analysis of inequality perceptions based on values surveys that allows contrasting facts with the perceptions and deriving important leads to the explanation of the facts-perceptions paradox. This report look into inequality into the poorest areas of Egypt to understand the nature of inequality among the poor and how low inequality can coexists with high poverty. By better understanding the nature of inequality, this part of the study provides some initial indications on policies that can be effective for poverty reduction. The report summarizes more in detail the findings of each part of the study.
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出版 86473 2014年1月1日
Verme, Paolo; Milanovic, Branko; Al-Shawarby, Sherine; El Tawila, Sahar; Gadallah, May; El-Majeed, Enas Ali A.
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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