Informal trade supports the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of households in Africa, reaches markets and clients that are underserved by formal channels, and contributes to regional food security.
... 更多显示 Despite numerous benefits, conducting cross-border transactions remains expensive for small traders in Africa. For example, small traders in Malawi and Zambia pay 62 percent more in per unit terms for border costs than large formal traders. While there are systems in place to facilitate cross-border trade such as the current Simplified Trade Regime (STR) that eases certain customs processes, a host of registration and other requirements remain in place and increase small traders' costs to uncompetitive levels. This note presents an overview of key challenges faced by small traders across Africa, and proposes the charter for cross-border traders as a potential solution to address them. Special attention is given to the case of Malawi and Zambia, where the Charter is currently being piloted by the World Bank in collaboration with the respective Governments, Traders' Associations, and border officials as part of the first joint policy action emerging from the Diagnostics Trade Integration Studies (DTIS) carried out in the two countries.
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Two of the most important trade policy developments to take place since the 1980s are the expansion of preferential trade agreements and temporary trade barriers, such as antidumping, safeguards, and countervailing duties.
... 更多显示 Despite the empirical importance of preferential trade agreements and temporary trade barriers and the common feature that each can independently have quite discriminatory elements, relatively little is known about the nature of any relationships between them. This paper surveys the literature on some of the political-economic issues that can arise at the intersection of preferential trade agreements and temporary trade barriers and uses four case studies to illustrate variation in how countries apply the World Trade Organization's global safeguards policy instrument. The four examples include recent policies applied by a variety of types of countries and under different agreements: large and small countries, high-income and emerging economies, and free trade areas and customs unions. The analysis reveals important measurement and identification challenges for research that seeks to find evidence of systematic relationships between the formation of preferential trade agreements, the political-economic implications of their implementation, and the use of subsequent temporary trade barriers.
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政策研究报告 WPS6898 2014年6月1日
Bown, Chad P.; Karacaovali, Baybars; Tovar, Patricia
This paper analyzes theoretically and empirically the impact of comparative advantage in international trade on fertility. It builds a model in which industries differ in the extent to which they use female relative to male labor and countries are characterized by Ricardian comparative advantage in either female labor or male labor intensive goods.
... 更多显示 The main prediction of the model is that countries with comparative advantage in female labor intensive goods are characterized by lower fertility. This is because female wages and therefore the opportunity cost of children are higher in those countries. The paper demonstrates empirically that countries with comparative advantage in industries employing primarily women exhibit lower fertility. The analysis uses a geography-based instrument for trade patterns to isolate the causal effect of comparative advantage on fertility.
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The common external tariff (CET) for Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was adopted at a Heads of State Summit in October 2013 in Dakar.
... 更多显示 This paper assesses the potential impact on Nigeria of implementing the new ECOWAS CET. It uses the World Bank's tariff reform impact simulation tool (TRIST) to simulate three scenarios: (i) keeping in place current import bans and levies which are charged in addition to tariffs, while implementing the CET tariff rate on non-banned products, (ii) removing the import bans and implementing the CET rate on all products, but keeping the additional import levies in place, and (iii) fully implementing the CET on all products and completely removing import bans and levies. The paper suggests that implementing the CET will have significant and largely positive effects on Nigerian consumers and producers. This note is intended to enrich the debate by presenting projections on the likely effects of CET implementation. To the extent possible with the limited available data, it gives a comprehensive overview of the effects to be expected on government revenue, the welfare of consumers, and the performance of Nigerian firms. It also discusses new opportunities for Nigerian firms to benefit from the regional market that are likely to arise if the CET is implemented. The note is organized as follows: section one gives introduction. Section two describes Nigeria's current trade profile with a particular focus on trade with the ECOWAS region. Section three makes use of the World Bank's TRIST to analyze the impact of implementing the CET in Nigeria in terms of changes in the level of protection by industry, government revenue from taxes levied at the border, consumer welfare, and the competitiveness of Nigerian firms. Section four shifts the focus beyond Nigeria's borders to look at the regional market within ECOWAS.
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Caribbean countries face a rapidly changing trade environment, which presents both opportunities and challenges for economies highly dependent on external markets.
... 更多显示 The features of the new trade environment include: i) redefinition of relations with their main trading partners, including the United States, where Caribbean exports continue to enjoy preferential access under the Caribbean Basin Initiative, and the European Union, through the recently signed Economic Partnership Agreement; ii) the increasing economic influence of the new growth poles1 (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and Korea) ; iii) and the redesign of the CARICOM regional trade agreement in order to implement the Caribbean Single Market Economy (CSME) as well as a number of preferential trade agreements within the region. These changes are likely to change the trading structure of the Caribbean countries and, through this restructuring, to have implications for the welfare of these economies. Understanding these implications is critical in terms of designing appropriate policy response to the trade changes but also in terms of eventually re-shaping trade agreements and policies.
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This paper proposes methods to incorporate firm heterogeneity in the standard input-output table-based approach to portray the domestic segment of global value chains in a country.
... 更多显示 The analysis uses Chinese firm census data for the manufacturing and service sectors, along with constrained optimization techniques. The conventional input-output table is split into sub-accounts, which are used to estimate direct and indirect domestic value added in exports of different types of firms. The analysis finds that in China, state-owned enterprises and small and medium domestic private enterprises have much higher shares of indirect exports and ratios of value-added exports to gross exports compared with foreign-invested and large domestic private firms. Based on input-output tables for 2007 and 2010, the paper finds increasing value-added export ratios for all firm types, particularly for state-owned enterprises. It also finds that state-owned enterprises are consistently more upstream while small and medium domestic private enterprises are consistently more downstream within industries. These findings suggest that state-owned enterprises still play an important role in shaping China's exports.
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The rapid economic rise of China over the last twenty years has sustained high global demand and prices for primary commodities such as oil and minerals, greatly benefitting Sub-Saharan (SSA) African countries.
... 更多显示 China now represents more than 20 percent of SSA's trade, up from just 2.3 percent in 1985. West Africa's share in China's trade is still quite low, 0.6 percent in 2012, but it is rising rapidly. Exports to China - oil, iron, phosphates, gold, cotton, cocoa and cashew nuts, have grown fast. However, they have not grown as rapidly as imports, resulting in a large trade deficit with China (13 percent of West Africa's GDP over 2009-2012). Reasons include a strong consumption demand for inexpensive Chinese products as well as the import-content requirements in development assistance agreements. Looking at the impact of China on West Africa, it appears that West African producers do not compete with China on third markets; by and large their products are complementary. However, West African producers are finding difficult to compete with China in their own domestic as well as in regional markets. The paper's main messages are as follows: Chinese demand for primary commodities is likely to continue in the near future, potentially benefitting West Africa. To maximize these benefits, West African countries need to maintain macroeconomic stability and to design appropriate policies to manage the volatility of commodity prices while raising the competitiveness of the economy. The current stagnation of the agricultural and manufacturing sectors in many West African countries is a sign of Dutch disease effects that should not be underestimated and need to be readdressed; and while the specific reforms needed vary from country to country, they should be comprehensive enough to generate a shift in the policy stance aimed at increasing productivity and encouraging diversification in the tradable sector. Examples of such reforms include the removal of trade restrictions among West African countries, the dismantling of formal and informal trade barriers to regional processing activities and the improvement of trade logistics.
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Turkish exporters substantially broadened market reach, exporting to 137 countries at present, up from 90 in 2000. Turkey's global market share rose substantially from 0.55 percent of global imports in 2002 to 0.82 percent in 2012.
... 更多显示 Turkey aims to become one of the ten largest economies in the world by 2023, with per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) rising to United States (U.S.) $25,000 and exports to U.S. 500 billion dollars. This report focuses on Turkey's competitiveness from the supply side, but it is important to note that ensuring a more balanced mix of financing for the required investment through measures to boost domestic savings is equally important if Turkey's progress is to be sustained. Achieving Turkey's export target is possible and it will likely require a larger global market share. The relatively low level of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Turkish manufacturing has been a constraint to export growth and quality improvements. Raising export growth to levels that help meet Turkey's development goals will require a policy agenda that targets sustained further improvements in Turkey's physical, human, and institutional capital. This report prioritizes broader policies that are fundamental for Turkey to export its way out of middle-income. Chief among these are policies that: (i) link the country further with international markets, including by helping bring larger inflows of FDI, particularly into the manufacturing sector; (ii) promote innovation, including by encouraging a large role for private companies in research and development (R and D); (iii) upgrade the skills both of the existing work force and new entrants; and (iv) improve access to finance, particularly long-term, with a view to unlock the potential of the dynamic small and medium enterprise (SME) sector.
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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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Some of the headings included in this issue of the Development Economics Prospects Group (DECPG) daily economics and financial market commentary newsletter are as follows: financial markets; high-income economies; and developing economies in Europe and Central Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
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The diagnostic trade integration study (DTIS) update identifies the trade related constraints holding back Malawi from diversifying and deepening its production base, and increasing trade.
... 更多显示 The DTIS update identifies and quantifies specific trade costs that determine the availability and price of inputs and the ability of producers to get their products to regional and international markets. The report focuses on tariff policies, regulatory issues impacting on trade, trade facilitation and logistics, and policies affecting agricultural trade and trade in services. Recognizing that the (enhanced) integrated framework and the DTIS (including the 2003 DTIS for Malawi) have not been effective in addressing many of the broader issues requiring large-scale physical investments in most countries, this DTIS update focuses on specific trade related policy and regulatory issues within the mandate and policy space of the ministry of trade and the national implementation unit or similar implementation mechanisms. In this context, the report is structured as follows: chapter one gives introduction. Chapter two outlines the current macroeconomic position and the level of trade openness, summarizes the status of the business enabling environment. Chapter three describes Malawi's current trade policy with a detailed review of the existing tariff schedules. Chapter four addresses a range of the key regulatory issues that raise costs for all producers in Malawi. Chapter five looks in depth at how the trade and regulatory policies within the agricultural sector impact on competitiveness. Finally, chapter six addresses the important issues of trade in services through focusing on professional services such as engineering, accounting, and law.
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Some of the headings included in this issue of the Development Economics Prospects Group (DECPG) daily economics and financial market commentary newsletter are as follows: financial markets; high-income economies; and developing economies in East Asia and Pacific, and Europe and Central Asia.
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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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Some of the headings included in this issue of the Development Economics Prospects Group (DECPG) daily economics and financial market commentary newsletter are as follows: financial markets; developing economies in East Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and South Asia.
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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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