ALBERT

Notes: On average, Latin American firms are small with respect to world patterns, both in terms of the quantity of assets they control and the amount of employment they generate. We examine data on firm size from developed and developing countries around the world to assess the influence of demand, supply and institutional factors on the size of the largest firms in each country. We find that, besides the size of the economy and the level of income per capita, the key determinants of the size of firms are trade openness, stock market capitalisation and physical infrastructure. Our simulations suggest that if the gaps with respect to the best Latin American performer were closed in each of these three areas, firm size in the countries of the region would – on average – reach world patterns.

Notes: The last ten years have seen many Latin American and Caribbean nations enact or reform competition laws, and numerous other jurisdictions are considering following suit. The evidential base to guide such policymaking is, however, limited. In this paper we have assembled two databases, one concerning allegations of anti-competitive acts in newspaper articles and another concerning the relationship between competition-related factors and the effects of reforms to liberalise markets, that may go some way to remedying this deficiency. In so doing, we have noticed a number of matters that producers and consumers of research in this area should probably bear in mind.

Notes: This paper provides the first empirical analysis of the global distribution of trademarks. It is based on a new dataset compiled by the authors from the statistical information published by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). The questions analysed include the distribution of trademarks among countries of different income levels, the share of trademark registrations accounted for by foreign residents and its variation across different income groups, the extent to which poor countries participate in the international trademark system, and the distribution of registrations across different sectors of the economy. The evidence presented in this paper is relevant for assessing possible welfare implications of changes in intellectual property protection and evaluating the role of reputational assets in determining international trading patterns.

Notes: Economic reform, on an ongoing basis, is vital if economies are to achieve, and maintain, rapid and sustained economic growth. Yet governments face challenges when introducing economic reforms. Policymakers must judge what reforms are needed; when to introduce them; and how rapidly to pursue their reform programme. Failed reforms can discredit the reform process as a whole, and so make it more difficult, and more costly, to retry in the future. The reform process in emerging market economies provides many lessons that are widely applicable. Perseverance is critical: reforms must be followed through if they are to be successful. Reforms also need to be wide-ranging, encompassing not just monetary, fiscal and trade policy but reform of the financial sector and of public institutions. Reforms in many countries need to include the protection of property and individual rights; improved tax administration and greater efficiency of public spending; and commercial codes. Reforms can be most easily implemented at times of global expansion. Fiscal consolidation, for example, is more easily accomplished in a more favourable environment partly because it helps deliver future growth and partly because it gives governments scope for counter-cyclical policy during future downturns.

Notes: Government policy in China supports urban wages at the expense of returns to farm labour. A model is developed to estimate how WTO accession and complementary labour market reform will influence factor returns in China. With WTO membership, a larger cut in manufacturing tariffs compared to agriculture will improve agriculture's terms of trade and will raise the agricultural wage. Complementary labour market reforms will further boost farm wages as labour exits agriculture in large numbers. We estimate that WTO membership and complementary labour market reforms will result in a decline in the agricultural labour force by about 25 per cent.

Notes: Books reviewed:PETER NOLAN, China at the Crossroads.HUBERT STRAUSS, Demand and Supply of Aggregate Exports of Goods and Services: Multivariate Cointegration Analyses for the United States, Canada, and Germany.HORST SIEBERT (ed.), Macroeconomic Policies in the World Eco-nomy.JAMES R. MARKUSEN, Multinational Firms and the Theory of Inter-national Trade.

Notes: Since the beginning of the 1990s Japan has experienced economic stagnation. The economy had been allowed to overheat in the 1980s and a bubble had been built up. When this burst, there was massive asset-deflation, which led to a banking crisis. The bad debts were not faced up to effectively. Japanese banks could not achieve high enough margins to recapitalise themselves, and the government was for a long time reluctant to intervene effectively. The shock made economic agents more pessimistic, which led to an imbalance between savings and investment-demand. Excess savings were placed abroad and used to finance a domestic fiscal deficit, but this was not enough to close the gap and sustain growth. To be able to run a large current account surplus the yen needed to depreciate, but this was not achieved due to expectations about a future appreciation. The strategy to get out of the liquidity trap would include credible inflation targeting and yen depreciation. Monetary policy should have an inflation target well above zero per cent. Such macroeconomic measures need to be complemented by structural reforms such as deregulation of financial services, competition policy and reallocation of public investments. The Japanese development model with close connections between firms and banks needs to be reformed. Japan should be able to achieve stable growth again, but since the catch-up phase is over one would not expect growth in Japan to be higher than in other developed countries, even if Japan undertakes the needed reforms.

Notes: This paper explores the structure of Italian revealed comparative advantages (RCA), focusing on the export structure itself, on its changes over time and on its degree of persistence. The analysis is developed with the use of visual statistical tools and non-parametric statistical techniques that allow to estimate the empirical distribution of the Balassa (1965) index, and to track its dynamics during three decades, from the 1970s to the present. The main results of the analysis are that the structure of Italian RCA is highly persistent, but is changing; the structure is very different when it is examined at a macro-regional level; the distribution is not so similar to the one of the new industrialised countries, when it is examined at a high level of sectoral disaggregation. Finally, the persistence in the pattern of RCA appears to be positively related to the presence of industrial districts in export data disaggregated at the provincial level.

Notes: This study estimates potential exchange rate variation among 26 European countries during 1992–1998, as a proxy for the potential magnitude of adjustment they face to euro-block membership, using the instrumental variable (IV) method, applying least squares cross-section regression analysis based on optimal currency area theory. A currency union among Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Malta, the Netherlands and Slovenia is found to entail a relatively light burden of adjustment for its members. The current membership of other countries in the euro-block is potentially very demanding on their societies in the long term. This study also compares currency boards and independent central banks as alternative monetary frameworks for disinflation policies. Based on a pooled time-series, cross-section dataset of the same countries and years currency boards are found to be more effective in reducing inflation in all countries except Belgium. Balancing EMU's credibility gains against its adjustment costs, Finland, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain seem like unstable members of the euro-block. For all new EU member states except the Czech Republic, Malta, Slovenia and Slovakia the advice is to stay out of the euro-block until their economies are liberalised and flexible enough to withstand major adjustments, and their societal interest groups supportive enough of these adjustments.

Notes: Many developing countries are currently experiencing oil windfalls, whether due to discoveries or to price effects. Such windfalls pose a series of policy dilemmas. The literature has focused on one of these: the choice between using windfall savings for public capital formation and investment in foreign assets. There are good theoretical reasons for investing a substantial part of the windfall initially abroad: the return to investment would fall below the world interest rate if the windfall were to be used entirely for domestic investment. Investing abroad offers an escape from diminishing returns: foreign assets can be repatriated gradually and used for domestic investment. However, in practice the efficient balance between domestic and foreign assets is politically difficult to sustain. Also, even if politically feasible this strategy is inefficient due to the failure to expand the private capital stock (‘equipment’). The policy problem is that the government cannot undertake such investment itself and trying to induce private agents to undertake equipment investment by transferring part of the windfall to them is likely to fail as a result of information problems. We argue that domestic debt repayment solves this dilemma. It has the added advantage of making foreign asset accumulation difficult to reverse.

Notes: In a paper published in The World Economy, Ronald McKinnon and Gunther Schnabl claim that fluctuations in the nominal yen/dollar exchange rate are the principal causal factor behind the export and business cycles in East Asian countries (McKinnon and Schnabl, 2003). Their econometric work, however, suffers from at least two important difficulties. First, while McKinnon and Schnabl preclude industry shocks as an explanation for the East Asian countries’ macroeconomic fluctuations, cyclical fluctuations in the global electronics industry have a significant impact on their short-run export and output dynamics. Second, although McKinnon and Schnabl assume that the relative industrial competitiveness of Japan and other East Asian countries moves in tandem with fluctuations in the nominal yen/dollar exchange rate, the empirical validity of this assumption is not indisputable. Once these two issues are taken into account properly, it becomes very difficult to make a convincing case for the yen/dollar exchange rate being the main driver of East Asia's macroeconomic instability. A brief critique will also be made of another paper that has appeared recently in The World Economy (Doraisami, 2004), which models Malaysia's pre-crisis export dynamics using the nominal yen/dollar exchange rate as a proxy for the country's export competitiveness.

Notes: This paper explains why trade-policy makers may prefer reciprocal trade negotiations (RTN) to unilateral tariff reductions (UTR) for economic reasons. It answers puzzles like ‘Why WTO reciprocity?’ and strengthens the unnecessarily weak case made for the WTO by those who downplay or dismiss benefits from foreign tariff reductions (FTR).RTN is superior to UTR because it provides economic benefits that UTR cannot – namely, FTR benefits which are clearer than potentially important UTR benefits: Whereas each policy offers efficiency gains, any terms-of-trade effect of UTR generally detracts from these gains, while any terms-of-trade effect of FTR is typically beneficial (especially for a small price-taking country) with this benefit augmenting FTR's efficiency gains. Moreover, benefits from reductions in foreign barriers may come from several sources; they are not solely the result of terms-of-trade improvement – or economies of scale (the two benefits already noted in the literature, though often dismissed). For example, with foreign NTB elimination, possible home benefits are shown even with rising costs and terms-of-trade deterioration. RTN is also superior to UTR because, by eliminating protection in either NTB or tariff form, RTN provides an escape from not only a terms-of-trade prisoners’ dilemma, but many other previously unrecognised prisoners’ dilemmas, including one in international rent transfers, and several others with no economies-of-scale or terms-of-trade motivation.Of course, if superior RTN is not an option, UTR may well be desirable. If reciprocity is an option, but only in a narrower CU or FTA form, such reciprocity may still be superior to UTR, or it may be inferior; theory cannot unambiguously rank these.

Notes: In this paper, we focus on the evolution of the optimum currency area (OCA) properties between Canada and the United States. To this end, we specifically investigate the relationship between the intra-industry trade dynamics of Canadian provinces with the United States and the increasing level of integration between the two countries from 1980 to 1998. Our findings lead us to support the view that integration (real and monetary) improves the conditions under which a monetary union can yield net gains in the long run for the integrating countries. We also find that exchange rate developments exert asymmetric effects on the Canadian provinces.

Notes: Japan has promoted its exports by reducing the risks accompanying overseas sales through short-term facilities for exporters. Short-term export insurance schemes operated in line with rules on minimum premia are not prohibited according to current international trade rules. The insured amount of underwriting has however grown steadily and the balance of accounts of export insurance has deteriorated over a sustained, ‘long-term’ period. The Japanese government has supported the system by reinforcing its financial base. In the 1980s and 1990s, the amount of claims was almost three times higher than premium incomes. Although the Japanese government may have subsidised exporters through the export insurance system, such subsidisation is notionally at least in accordance with the current regulations of the global trading system. The multilateral trading system has included export insurances at premium rates inadequate for covering the long-term operating costs and losses of the programmes in the list of export subsidies. The current Members of the WTO are obliged to abide by the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures which comprises the illustrative list of export subsidies. However, the Agreement also stipulates that export insurances consistent with the interest rate provisions of the OECD Arrangement should not be considered as an export subsidy. Therefore, provision of export insurances not prohibited by the WTO regulations may be considered by developing countries undergoing trade deficits as a means of export promotion. Japan has done similarly for the past half century.

Notes: There are three well-known observations about the current regional trade policy of Europe. The first one is the central role played by the European Union in the worldwide spreading of regional agreements. The second is the new policy of signing bilateral deep regional trade agreements. The third is the growing demand for harmonisation of international and domestic trade regulations. We show that the combination of these three trends results in Europe increasingly weighing on the policy decisions of its trade partners, in particular with regard to their trade policies. The European hegemonic influence – which can be viewed as Europe ‘exporting’ its policy models – is extending to all partners in preferential trade agreements, not only the accession candidates. It has two main broad manifestations: a prescriptive approach to push bilateral partners into regional agreements among themselves; and a tendency to diffuse European rules in its bilateral agreements with its partners. We review the various provisions of the agreements through which this influence operates. Although this policy can be viewed as desirable in some instances, it also generates actual and potential future costs for developing countries, as well as posing non-trivial dangers to the process of multilateral liberalisation and to the building of appropriate policies for the partner countries.

Notes: One implication of the pollution haven hypothesis is that countries export more by applying more lenient environmental regulations. Most studies that apply gravity-type equations do not find robust support for environmental regulations to affect bilateral exports. In this paper, we show that one can obtain robust negative effects of stringency, as long as gravity equations are well specified with respect to theory. Our results, based on the European data, are both very consistent with US studies on environmental regulations and another line of very recent studies that infer non-biased price or substitution elasticities from trade equations. We show that more stringent environmental regulations, when depicting a pure cost effect, are reducing exports. The coefficient is even larger in the case where exporting countries are Central and Eastern European countries, comparing to the EU15. Further, we show that there is no significant difference in the impact of regulations on trade in case of dirty and clean sectors. Finally, when using GMM estimation, our environmental stringency coefficient gets significantly reinforced.

Notes: This paper analyses the border effect in Spain using a unique dataset on intranational trade flows over the period 1995–98. The results indicate that, after controlling for market size and distance, Spanish regions trade around 22 times more with the rest of Spain than they do with OECD countries. Moreover, the size of the Spanish bias is lower in the case of the Spanish regions’ exports than in the case of imports, although the difference is not statistically significant in most cases. Finally, the border effect is not uniform across Spanish regions.

Notes: This paper discusses the recent regional trade agreements that China has concluded rapidly following accession to the WTO in 2002. Agreements are in place with Hong Kong, Macao, ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand, and are either in negotiation or under discussion with South Africa, Chile, India and the Gulf Cooperation Council. These agreements differ sharply in form and substance, and involve process commitments to ongoing negotiation and cooperation on a wide range of issues. Differences relating to the regional agreements negotiated by the EU and the US are emphasised, as are later potential difficulties these agreements create in moving to an Asian trade bloc centred on them.

Notes: More than three years have passed since the inception of the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) in May 2000. Although much progress has been made, the present structure of the CMI is still incomplete. The purpose of this paper is to provide a view on the current process and future prospects for regional financial and monetary cooperation in East Asia. Looking forward, the most realistic scenario is that the countries participating in the CMI will muddle through, continuously discussing modalities of policy dialogue, the types of the surveillance system the CMI needs, and also augmentation of swap amounts without making any substantial progress.

Notes: This paper uses the theory of international trade in vertically differentiated products in order to assess whether the EU has calculated disproportionately high dumping margins in its anti-dumping policy towards the two non-market economies (NMEs) Russia and China since 1992. Specifically, the investigation concerns cases in which the level of economic development in and the quality of the products from the chosen analogue country are higher than in the two NMEs. The conclusion drawn here is that, even when the EU chooses analogue countries at a higher level of economic development than Russia and China, the differences in product quality and in the levels of economic development between the dumpers and the analogue countries provide no systematic explanation of the size of dumping margins.

Notes: In currency crises, unlike in orderly devaluations, the financial markets dominate events. Previous research has shown that the output effects of a crisis tend to be worse in emerging markets, and the current account adjustment greater. This paper examines the evolution of a wider range of macroeconomic variables from two years before a currency collapse to two years afterwards. On the basis of twelve recent episodes, it is shown that currency collapses (crises followed by depreciations) have had a much greater adverse impact in emerging markets (defined as relatively high-income developing countries exposed to international capital markets) than in developed countries. There is greater nominal and real depreciation, a substantial inflation shock, a much bigger output effect, and far greater import compression, whilst inflows of portfolio capital virtually cease. These differences are statistically significant. Nevertheless there is wide variation n the post-collapse experience of the six emerging markets studied (Mexico, Thailand, Korea, Indonesia, Russia and Brazil). Although all six experienced a sudden stop or even a reversal of capital flows and very sharp nominal depreciations, inflation remained low in Thailand, Korea and Brazil, and output losses were comparatively small in Russia and Brazil. Previous studies of individual crises suggest that important factors are the state of the banking system and its vulnerability to currency movements, the ability of the authorities to establish a credible macroeconomic policy after the collapse, and whether the crisis triggers significant political instability.

Notes: Books reviewed:BRINK LINDSEY and DANIEL J. IKENSON, Antidumping Exposed: The Devilish Details of Unfair Trade Law.GEORGE T. ABED and SANJEEV GUPTA (eds.), Governance, Corruption and Economic Performance.AADITYA MATTOO and ROBERT M. STERN, India and the WTO.

Notes: This paper examines individual trade policy preferences across 17 countries in Latin America. The focus is on whether skilled or unskilled workers are more likely to support liberalised trade and on whether country characteristics, such as factor endowments, alter the preferences of skilled and unskilled workers. Based on the standard Heckscher-Ohlin model and the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, wage inequality in developing countries will decrease under free trade and unskilled workers will benefit. We find that on average skilled workers are more likely than unskilled workers to support free trade in Latin American countries. Separate country regressions reveal that this pattern is only statistically significant in 8 out of 17 Latin American countries. However, there are no countries in our sample in which unskilled workers are statistically more likely to support free trade than skilled workers, not even in the lowest skill-endowed country in the sample. We also find that people from Latin American countries with higher GDP, faster growth, more cropland and a longer period of time since reform were more likely on average to support free trade.

Notes: The last five decades have witnessed a profound evolution of economic policy in developing countries, particularly in the case of trade strategies. Both internal, as well as external, factors have prompted the need for more outward-oriented (or liberalised) trade policy regimes. The creation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1947 and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995 have been important driving forces for free trade. Since then, the major quantitative barriers to trade, i.e. tariffs and non-tariff barriers (quotas, licences and technical specifications, among other restrictions), have substantially been reduced or dismantled. Also, the progress towards more liberalised trade regimes, mainly in developing countries, has been manifested in the trade and development literature. Major studies suggest that the performance of more outward-oriented economies is superior to that of those countries pursuing more inward-looking trade practices (Greenaway and Nam, 1988; Dollar, 1992; Sachs and Warner, 1995; and Rodríguez and Rodrik, 2000). Recent developments in the international trade literature focus on the potential dynamic effects of trade liberalisation, i.e. simplification of tariff structures and elimination of non-tariff barriers, in reducing the incentives to rent seeking and in accelerating the flow of technical knowledge from the world market. Moreover, there have been important advances regarding the study of trade liberalisation and its impact on exports, imports and the balance of payments, largely neglected in the literature, often driven by supply-side considerations.

Notes: Regional integration, it is argued, challenges the distribution of economic activity among regions. However, the government role in shifting the patterns of regional inequalities is still under debate and has received small comprehensive empirical evidence. This paper examines the hypothesis of trade as channelling public investment and, thus, perpetuating regional inequalities. We argue that the interplay of public and private investment plays a key role in stimulating trade and economic activity. To avoid problems of cross-country heterogeneity and comparability this study examines data for two countries; Mexico and Spain, both followers of trade integration arrangements. Findings indicate that regional inequalities in Mexico are significantly explained by differences in export capacity serving to boost private investment whereas inequalities in Spain are appreciably driven by previous endowments and private capital formation.

Notes: This paper estimates the relationship between trade facilitation and trade flows using a panel of disaggregated manufactured goods for the 2000–2001 period for 75 countries. Four categories of trade facilitation are defined, measured and assessed for their impact on bilateral trade flows using a gravity model. The four measures of trade facilitation are: port infrastructure (air and maritime), customs environment, regulatory environments and e-business infrastructure. The results suggest that raising global capacity halfway to the world average in the four areas would increase trade by $377 billion. Most regions of the world increase exports more than imports. In large part, this result stems from increased exports to OECD markets that is obtained through a country's own effort to improve ports, customs, regulations and services infrastructures. In addition, the results suggest that reform and capacity building in trade facilitation in areas related to GATT Articles V, VIII and X that are under discussion at the World Trade Organisation could expand trade and exports significantly. Many of the reform measures necessary to achieve this goal need not necessarily require large-scale investment projects, but rather action in legal and administrative reform to facilitate trade.

Notes: Books reviewed:TAKATOSHI ITO and ANNE O. KRUEGER (eds.), Governance, Regulation, and Privatization in The Asia-Pacific Region.ELHANAN HELPMAN, The Mystery of Economic Growth.DANIEL H. ROSEN, SCOTT ROZELLE and JIKUN HUANG, Roots of Competitiveness: China's Evolving Agriculture InterestsJAMES J. HECKMAN and CARMEN PAGÉS (eds.), Law and Employment: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Notes: The European Union grants preferential market access for sugar to a group of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. Sugar exported under these quotas receives between two and three times the world price. These trade preferences are intended as a form of aid, but they tend to stifle productivity growth in the recipient countries. The European Union could better assist ACP countries by providing direct development assistance in place of sugar subsidies, for example by investing the aid transfers into infrastructure or other essential public services. This paper tests this proposition for the case of Fiji using a computable general-equilibrium model. It is found that significant gains in economic performance can be achieved by employing such alternative strategies for aid. These gains are particularly strong over the medium to long term when the aid funds are diverted to infrastructure development. However, there are issues of equity to consider since, in the case of Fiji, the rural poor would be the losers if trade preferences were to be removed. Moreover, the degree of benefit in alternative strategies such as infrastructure development will be contingent on the economy's flexibility, which in turn depends upon the country's regulatory regime and education performance.

Notes: This paper presents a variety of indicators which reflect the extent of protection of individual manufacturing industries in ten countries of Central and Eastern Europe by the ‘Buy National’ rules in public procurement. Eight countries joined the EU in 2004 and the two remaining countries will become full members in 2007. Combining these data with information on the current international competitiveness of each individual industry, the paper identifies those industries that are likely to be particularly sensitive to the abolition of ‘Buy National’ rules due to their recent accession to the European Union. Two series of indicators are proposed to measure the impact of ‘Buy National’ policies. The first series outlines the behaviour of the public sector vis-à-vis domestic production and imports. The second series of indicators sketches the industrial structure of the sectors which, following the above analysis, seem to be protected by preferential public procurement. The interaction of both series of indicators can provide information about the extent of protection in terms of public procurement on a sectoral level and about its impact on domestic production.

Notes: Negotiations on industrial tariffs in the current WTO work programme have turned out to be surprisingly difficult. On the one hand, developing countries, particularly in Africa, are concerned about the potential negative effect on their industrial development of developed country efforts to push them into deep cuts in applied tariffs: after the disillusion of the Uruguay Round, promises of welfare gains seem unconvincing. On the other hand, a number of the more complex formula proposals for tariff-cutting make it difficult for participants to evaluate what they have to do compared with what they hope to receive. The developing countries may achieve greater exports and welfare gains from the more ambitious proposals, but computations show that these also imply greater imports, lower tariff revenues, some labour market adjustments and reduced output in some politically sensitive sectors. Some way of assisting the developing countries in coping with these adjustments is required to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the negotiations.

Notes: Trade liberalisation of environmental services, and water services in particular, under the current WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), has been widely advocated as a means of increasing private sector participation in the water sector in developing countries. Recognising that effective regulation is needed to ensure that the potential gains from private sector involvement are fully realised, the paper considers the relationship between national regulatory autonomy and GATS liberalisation in water services. The empirical evidence on the impact of private sector involvement in the provision of water services in developing countries is reviewed, and a number of reasons why water privatisation has been problematic in lower-income countries are identified, including transaction costs and regulatory weaknesses. The study concludes that developing countries with limited regulatory resources should adopt a cautious approach to services liberalisation, by sequencing market liberalisation measures to match the development of their regulatory institutional capacity.

Notes: Books reviewed:MAARTEN C. W. JANSSEN (ed.), Auctioning Public Assets: Analysis and Alternatives.RONALD I. MCKINNON, Exchange Rates under the East Asian Dollar Standard.SANJEEV GUPTA, BENEDICT CLEMENTS and GABRIELA INCHAUSTE (eds.), Helping Countries Develop: The Role of Fiscal Policy.

Notes: The United States grants preferential (tariff- and quota-free) market access to a list of products from eligible countries in sub-Saharan Africa through the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). We analyse the increase in prices received by apparel exporters who benefited from AGOA preferences. In the presence of competitive markets, export prices should increase as much as the tariff which was previously collected by the US government. We refer to this price increase as the ‘tariff preference rent’ since exporters receive this income as the rent for their preferential status. The results show that exporters receive only one-third of this rent and smaller exporters receive less than larger and established ones. We then provide evidence that suggests this may be due to the degree of market power enjoyed by US importers when facing African exporters.

Notes: The debates on regional trade arrangements in East Asia focus on whether the RTAs can be net trade creating or diverting, and whether they impede multilateral trade liberalisation or not. This paper attempts to answer these questions by quantitatively estimating the economic impact of possible East Asian free trade areas based on a bilateral gravity model, and evaluating the main characteristics of the proposed FTAs. We find that the trade creation effect expected from the proposed East Asian FTAs such as a China-Japan-Korea or an ASEAN plus three (China, Japan, Korea) FTA will be significant enough to overwhelm the trade diversion effect. We also judge that East Asian FTAs will likely be a building block for a global free trade.

Notes: In this paper we consider the effectiveness of eco-labels as a substitute for alternative, but trade-restrictive, environmental policies. Specifically, while there are concerns that eco-labelling requirements increase the cost of international trade, due to their potential for misuse as technical trade barriers, little attention has been given to the environmental benefits of eco-labelling. We show that incentive problems inherent in eco-labelling policies make it a very weak tool of environmental policy. Despite this, we argue that eco-labelling schemes may remain popular, owing to the lack of alternative WTO compliant environmental policies. We also use this framework to consider the economic and political conflicts facing the EU with regard to its policies on genetically modified organisms.

Notes: Recent research has focused on the short- to medium-term implications of trade reforms for the labour market outcomes and poverty in poor economies. This article summarises the evidence on the short-term consequences of the Colombian trade reform initiated in 1985 for industry employment and industry wages. Although the reform reduced manufacturing tariffs on average by 40 percentage points from 1984 to 1994, tariff declines were not significantly associated with labour reallocation across sectors. The reform, however, was associated with bigger declines in relative industry wages in sectors that experienced bigger tariff cuts. This evidence is in line with the predictions of short- to medium-run models of trade in which labour is not mobile across sectors. It is also consistent with the predictions of models where imperfectly competitive industries share rents with workers and trade reduces the firms’ profit margins and thus workers’ rents.

Notes: This paper studies the experience of Latin America (LATAM) with financial liberalisation in the 1990s. The rush towards financial liberalisations in the early 1990s was associated with expectations that external financing would alleviate the scarcity of saving in LATAM, thereby increasing investment and growth. Yet, the data and several case studies suggest that the gains from external financing are overrated. The bottleneck inhibiting economic growth is less the scarcity of saving, and more the scarcity of good governance. A possible interpretation for these findings is that in countries where private savings and investments were taxed in an arbitrary and unpredictable way, the credibility of a new regime could not be assumed or imposed. Instead, credibility must be acquired as an outcome of a learning process. Consequently, increasing the saving and investment rates tends to be a time-consuming process. This also suggests that greater political instability and polarisation would induce consumers to be more cautious in increasing their saving and investment rates following a reform. Hence, reaching a sustained take-off in Latin America is a harder task to accomplish than in Asia.

Notes: Given that the value of China's currency has been a hot topic recently, this paper explores the equilibrium levels of China's real and nominal exchange rates. Employing a Johansen cointegration framework, we focus on the behavioural equilibrium exchange rate (BEER) and permanent equilibrium exchange rate (PEER) models. Our results suggest that, while the renminbi is somewhat undervalued against the dollar, the misalignment is not nearly as exaggerated as many popular claims.

Notes: At the time of the conclusion of free trade areas (FTAs) between the USA and Middle-East and North African (MENA) countries, there is a lack of literature concerning the measurement of the current US export position with regards to these countries, and the US export potential in this area. From recent developments of gravity models, this paper derives an estimable equation which includes various trade resistance variables, notably border effects, multilateral resistance as well as specific bilateral effects. The model is tested in order to scrutinise the impact of these variables on US exports to MENA countries, as well as the US export potential in this area. To that end, a selection of panel data specifications is proposed, mainly Hausman and Taylor models as well as Arellano and Bond dynamic models. Results unambiguously indicate that as compared to the other OECD countries, the USA suffers from a substantial trade integration deficit with MENA countries. This is reflected by the strongly negative values of the US-MENA bilateral fixed effects, as well as the high bilateral border effects. In addition, the estimated actual/potential US export ratio to these countries is only 0.76. Therefore, implementing an FTA between the USA and MENA countries may allow the former to progressively improve its export position in this area. This would also help MENA countries diversify their supplying sources.

Notes: This paper analyses the behaviour and motivation of fund managers in foreign exchange markets reflected in questionnaire evidence. We find that fund managers and FX dealers differ significantly. Fund managers rely more on fundamentals, basically due to their longer forecasting horizons, and reject non-fundamental influences on exchange rates more than FX dealers. However, neither can fund managers be considered as pure fundamentalists. Non-fundamentalist positions markedly influence short-term decision-making. They inspire ambivalent views about market imperfections and these views seem to become stronger over time. This latter change counterbalances the strengthening fundamental influences resulting from the rise of fund managers.

Notes: This paper provides quantitative estimates of the impact of removing agricultural support in both OECD and developing countries in partial and general equilibrium frameworks. The results show that agricultural support in OECD countries is highly distortionary, and tariffs have a larger distortionary impact than subsidies. Removal of agricultural support would likely raise the international prices of food, resulting in an increase in the cost of food for many net-food importing countries, although the size of the increase is generally small. The results also show that most of the benefits from removing agricultural support accrue to the countries that liberalise.

Notes: This paper attempts to explore the underlying causes of twin crises experienced by Turkey in November 2000 and February 2001. We study an extensive set of leading indicators of crises that are drawn from the existing literature. Our results identify three sets of vulnerabilities in the Turkish economy in triggering the financial crisis and bringing about the collapse of the Turkish lira. These are: first, the weak external position caused by excessive debt burden combined with the loss of competitiveness; second, the weak fiscal position resulting from the record levels of interest payments on domestic borrowing; and most importantly, third, weaknesses in the financial and banking sector. Given these observations, we argue that the success of financial sector reform is instrumental not only for putting the economy on a sustainable recovery path but also for reducing the likelihood of similar crises in the future. The general lesson to be drawn from this experience is that a sound financial system is a pre-condition for the successful operation of a fixed exchange rate regime.

Notes: This paper analyses the growth of production and employment in China during the period 1978 to the early 1990s. It argues that the Chinese experience with export-led growth provides an excellent case study of the phenomenon of a vent for surplus resources provided by exports, identified by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations and elaborated by Hla Myint. The paper extends the Smith-Myint model of ‘vent-for-surplus’ productive capacity to ‘vent-for-surplus’ resources by allowing for foreign investment flows. The ‘vent-for-surplus’ effect of exports on employment and growth is examined in a dynamic labour demand framework for a panel of township and village enterprises (TVEs) in China.

Notes: From its origins in 1910 the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) has been characterised by striking asymmetries in policies, levels of development and administrative capacity. Following the demise of apartheid in 1994, the five member countries (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland) began negotiations to reform the SACU. Eight years later, a new Agreement was signed in October 2002. In this paper, we outline the main characteristics of the 2002 Agreement and assess whether it addresses the criticisms of the preceding arrangement. Most importantly, the 2002 Agreement introduces shared decision-making and provides for a sustainable revenue-sharing arrangement. But varying levels of trade policy capacity along with policy divergences between the members present new challenges. Moreover, the exclusion of Services, Intellectual Property Rights and Singapore issues gives the 2002 Agreement a somewhat jaded appearance. Nevertheless, the reconstituted SACU could form the core of a larger regional customs union that would facilitate a realignment of the existing regional organisations. This will depend on the ongoing trade negotiations with both the EU and the United States. These negotiations will also put pressure on SACU to address excluded issues and reduce cross-border transaction costs in order to realise the benefits from economic cooperation.

Notes: This paper analyses the Balassa-Samuelson (B-S) framework for the case of Estonia using a unique dataset that consists of a 15-sectoral breakdown of GDP and a five-digit level CPI disaggregation with 260 items over the period from 1993 to 2002. Unlike the existing literature, the paper focuses on the following four aspects of the phenomenon: (a) data disaggregation, (b) definition of goods tradability, (c) price regulatedness in services and (d) possible heterogeneity across transition countries. It turns out that the first three aspects do matter and, in addition to this, Estonia appears to bear very specific characteristics when compared with other transition countries. A battery of cointegration techniques (DOLS, ARDL, Johansen) shows that productivity is strongly related to relative prices only when regulated prices are controlled for appropriately in the consumer price index and when country-specific classification is applied to the open and closed sectors. The B-S effect contributed to CPI by 1 to 1.5 per cent at the outset of the period and by 0.4 to 0.6 per cent in 2002, whereas its potential long-run impact is estimated to be 1 to 1.2 per cent. Although real appreciation due to the B-S effect seems higher in the early 1990s, it explains that better real appreciation occurred in recent years.

Notes: At the ASEAN Summit in November 2000, the leaders of ASEAN and China agreed to enhance economic cooperation and integration with the goal of establishing an ASEAN-China Free Trade Area (FTA). This decision was a natural response to a number of important global and regional developments of the past decade. Since the signing of the framework agreement, policymakers from China and ASEAN member states have already started their negotiations on the specific terms and features for this proposed FTA. While such an FTA would hold the potential of yielding enormous economic benefits, it also causes some sense of apprehension and uncertainty in some quarters, due to the common perception that China is already a strong competitor in trade and attracting foreign investment. To examine the economic basis for such concern, this paper analyses the economic implications of this proposed free trade area from the ASEAN economies’ perspective. Specifically, it examines how competitive ASEAN countries are vis-à-vis China, evaluate the scope for strengthening China-ASEAN trade and the impediments facing Chinese and ASEAN investors in each other's markets, and recommends policy measures to maximise the benefits and minimise the hardships resulting from an ASEAN-China FTA.

Notes: This article seeks to inform and enliven the debate on whether or not Britain should join the euro. The central focus of the article involves interviews with two leading economists, Professor Willem Buiter (Chief Economist and Special Counsellor to the President, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) who strongly supports the case for joining, and Professor Patrick Minford (Professor of Applied Economics, Cardiff Business School) who takes the opposite stance. The article begins with an introduction which places the interviews in context and concludes with a final section summarising the central points of commonality and departure arising in the interviews with Professors Buiter and Minford.

Notes: Books reviewed:CARL DAVIDSON and STEVEN J.MATUSZ, International Trade and Labour Markets: Theory, Evidence, and Policy Implications.CHRISTINA L. DAVIS, Food Fights Over Free Trade: How International Institutions Promote Agricultural Trade Liberalization.JAN JOOST TEUNISSEN and MARK TEUNISSEN (eds), Financial Stability and Growth in Emerging Economies: The Role of the Financial Sector.MARC FLANDREAU and FRÉDÉRIC ZUMER, The Making of Global Finance 1880–1913.

Notes: This paper assesses the determinants of European outward and inward processing trade. Thereby, it distinguishes between size, relative factor endowment, (other) cost factors and infrastructure variables. Using a large panel of bilateral processing trade flows of the EU12 countries at the aggregate level over the period 1988–1999, we find that infrastructure variables, relative factor endowments and other cost variables are important determinants for the EU's outward processing trade. Costs also play a key role for the EU's inward processing trade.

Notes: Developing nations are challenged to strike a balance between their patent obligations as members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and their drug pricing strategies. The Brazilian approach to pharmaceutical price negotiations has been strikingly effective. Describing the context of the Brazilian pharmaceutical sector, their public health system and the Brazilian AIDS policy, this paper examines the Brazilian strategy vis-à-vis the international pharmaceutical manufacturers to explore why their tactics were successful and the potential for wider application by other developing countries.

Notes: International trade can affect the environment in different ways. This may justify the introduction of border measures by the importing countries. In addition to various dispositions in the GATT, GATS, TRIPs agreements, as well as in the Agreement on Agriculture, this issue is regulated by the agreements on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and on the application of Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary standards (SPS). Despite these rules, abuse of environmental arguments for protectionist reasons remains an open issue. In order to disentangle protectionism from dispositions justified on the grounds of true environmental concerns, we systematically review notifications of SPS and TBTs by importing countries at the tariff line level. Trade is considered as being potentially affected when an environmental SPS/TBT is notified on grounds of environmental concerns. Affected trade is defined as imports by countries notifying such barriers. Protectionist use of environmental barriers is likely when only a limited number of countries impose an environmental obstacle on the imports of a given product. Considering data for 2001, we find that 88 per cent of the value of world trade is in products potentially affected by such measures, while 39 per cent of the value of world imports is potentially subject to a protectionist use of such measures. Agriculture, the automobile industry, the pharmaceutical industry and many other sectors are concerned.

Notes: We use the Michigan Model of World Production and Trade to assess the economic effects of the US bilateral FTAs negotiated with Central America, Australia and Morocco. The model covers 18 economic sectors in each of 22 countries/regions and is based on version 5.4 of the GTAP database for 1997 together with specially constructed estimates of services barriers and other data on sectoral employment and numbers of firms. The distinguishing feature of the model is that it incorporates imperfect competition in the manufacturing and services sectors, including monopolistic competition, increasing returns and product variety. The modelling focus is on the effects of the bilateral removal of tariffs on agriculture and manufactures and services barriers. Rules of origin and other restrictive measures and the non-trade aspects of the FTAs are not taken into account due to data constraints. The computational results indicate that the benefits of bilateral FTAs for the United States and partner countries are rather small in both absolute and relative terms, and that far greater benefits could be realised if the United States and its FTA partners adopted unilateral free trade and especially if multilateral free trade was adopted by all countries/regions in the global trading system.

Notes: A US patent protects the owner of the intellectual property from imitators producing in the US and foreign imitators selling in the US market. There are two venues for filing infringement cases against international infringement of US patents, with the International Trade Commission (ITC) using Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 or with federal district courts. Three indicators of patent value suggest that patents litigated under Section 337 are on average more valuable; however, their values tend to be more variable. The latter suggests that some firms may be using Section 337 not for protection against international infringement of US patents but for protection against imports.

Notes: This paper evaluates the impact of openness on growth in different country groups using a panel of 79 countries over the period 1970–98. It distinguishes itself from many existing studies in three aspects: Firstly, both trade and FDI are included as measures of openness. Secondly, countries are classified into high-, middle- and low-income groups to compare the roles of trade and FDI in these groups. Thirdly, the possible problems of endogeneity and multicollinearity of trade and FDI are carefully dealt with in a panel data setting. The main findings are as follows. Total trade has a general positive impact on growth in all country groups, although the impact from imports is not significant in high-income countries. FDI has a positive impact on growth in high- and middle-income countries, but not in low-income countries. With the existing absorptive capabilities, low-income countries can benefit from both exports and imports, but not from FDI. These findings suggest that trade and FDI affect growth through different channels and under different conditions. The paper also discusses important policy implications.

Notes: An increasing number of tropical timber-producing nations have enacted bans on export of logs arguing that this will reduce deforestation, expand downstream wood processing and improve the scale efficiency of domestic processing, create jobs and retain more value-added nationally. The theoretical literature is clear that trade restrictions are generally welfare reducing (except in special cases such as when there is a potential for an optimal export tax). At best, a log export ban is a second-best policy tool for reducing deforestation and addressing the associated environmental externalities. In overall terms, the suggestion that log export bans can achieve the objectives expected of them is dubious. However, very little quantitative evidence exists to demonstrate this claim and the paper attempts to address this gap by looking at the economic and environmental impacts of eliminating a log export ban in Costa Rica. The authors argue that eliminating the export ban is Pareto improving and could generate economic gains as high as $14 million per annum with the possibility of relatively modest environmental benefits.

Notes: The Kyoto Protocol gives Annex 1 countries considerable flexibility in the choice of domestic policies to meet their emissions commitments. Possible climate policies include carbon/energy taxes, subsidies, energy efficiency standards, eco-labels, and government procurement policies. In order to meet their targets with minimum adverse effects on their economies, Annex 1 governments with differentiated legal and political systems are highly likely to pursue these policies that may have the potential to bring them into conflict with their WTO obligations. This paper explores the potential interaction between these domestic climate policies and WTO rules. It argues that their potential conflicts can be avoided or at least minimised if WTO rules are carefully scrutinised, and efforts are made early on to ensure that the proposed climate policies comply with them. It suggests an early process of pursuing consultations between WTO members and the Parties to the Climate Change Convention and points to the need of further exploring ways to enhance synergies between the trade and climate regimes.

Notes: This paper examines the concept of global public goods (GPGs) and in that context explores the extent of aid (ODA) presently being diverted to GPG provision and whether such diversion skews aid-flows towards some recipients. These are examined on the basis of OECD data for the late 1990s. The main argument of this paper is that ODA should not be used for financing GPG provision by developing countries. Instead, it is suggested that other sources of financing the provision of GPGs should be developed keeping in view the various technologies by which the GPGs can be produced and design principles for supra-national institutions. Various arguments from Sandler, Barrett and Kanbur are considered. In particular, Kanbur's suggestion of two tensions involving the principles of economies of scale, subsidiarity, economies of scope and specialisation, is explored further.

Notes: In the light of the importance of foreign direct investment (FDI) for the promotion of economic development, this paper examines the impact of the changes in the real exchange rate and its volatility on FDI. Examining Japan's FDI by industries, we found that the depreciation of the currency of the host country attracted FDI, while the high volatility of the exchange rate discouraged FDI. Our results suggest the need to avoid over-valuation of the exchange rate and to maintain stable but flexible exchange rate in order to attract FDI.

Notes: Books reviewed:Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen and Aynsley Kellow, International Environmental Policy: Interests and the Failure of the Kyoto ProcessRolf Jungnickel (ed.) Foreign-Owned Firms: Are They Different?Thomas Cottier and Petros C. Mavroidis (eds.) Intellectual Property: Trade, Competition, and Sustainable DevelopmentJ. Bruinsma (ed.) World Agriculture Towards 2015/2030: An FAO Perspective

Notes: This paper examines the effects of EU integration in the 1990s on the FDI relations in Europe. We find that the completion of the Single Market, the 1995 enlargement and the so-called Eastern enlargement are characterised by a substantial, positive anticipation effect in the period between the announcement and the formal establishment of each integration step. Neither the Single Market Programme nor the previous enlargement exhibited any further positive effects on intra-EU FDI volumes after their establishment.

Notes: The purpose of this paper is to examine trade policy regime and trade-related development issues in the Maldives on the basis of the Trade Policy Review Maldives 2003 of the WTO. The key theme of the paper is that, given the narrow resource base and small domestic market, openness to foreign trade and investment remains the ‘natural’ policy choice for a small developing economy like the Maldives. Since the late 1980s, the Maldivian government has made considerable progress in implementing policy reforms driven by this conviction. However, the reform process is far from complete. High import tariffs maintained predominantly on revenue considerations, a large direct role played by the public sector in foreign trade and some key sectors of the economy, lack of transparency in duty concessions and other investment incentives, failure to incorporate environmental concerns as part of the national development policy, and delays in meeting reform commitments under the WTO are among the key items of the unfinished reform agenda.

Notes: Using a large sample of countries over the 1990s, this paper examines the extent to which institutions’ functioning disables a greater participation of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the world economy. It focuses on the impact on manufactured exports and FDI attractiveness and considers a broad index of political risk as well as indices targeted toward specific aspects of governance (corruption, government effectiveness and the rule of law). The results are robust to different econometric approaches and lend strong support to the hypothesis that the functioning of institutions may disable the participation of MENA countries in the world economy. They suggest that the impact of an improvement in the quality of institutions may result in a sensitive increase of FDI inflows and manufactured exports. That increase is comparable to the one resulting from liberalisation policies. Hence, although institutional reforms can take time, they deserve the necessary efforts given their outcomes as compared to other reforms.

Notes: Our analysis reveals that, from Russia's perspective, there is no economic rationale to unify the price of natural gas it sells domestically and in Europe. We argue that pipelines allow Gazprom to segment the Russian market from the European (including Turkey) market and that Russia has market power in the European market. If Russia were to fail to exploit this market power in its European market, by selling its natural gas to Europe at only full long-run marginal cost plus transportation costs, Russia would lose between $5 billion and $7.5 billion per year (almost two per cent of its GDP). If, instead, Russia were to raise its domestic prices to the prices it charges in Europe, Russian industry would incur very large investment adjustment and unemployment costs in the short run – adjustment costs that cannot be justified on the basis of comparative advantage. We estimate that the efficient world price would be achieved if Gazprom were to employ its optimal ‘two-part tariff’. The optimal two-part tariff would double Gazprom's annual profits in Europe, but it involves significant long-term risks for Gazprom of lost market share.

Notes: This paper discusses the potential impacts of services trade liberalisation on developing countries and reviews existing quantitative studies. Its purpose is to distill themes from current literature rather than to advocate specific policy changes. The picture emerging is one of valiant attempts to quantify in the presence of formidable analytical and data problems yielding only a clouded image of likely impacts on trade, consumption, production and welfare emerging to the point that the policy implications of results are not always clear.A central intuition would seem to be that with genuine two-sided (OECD/non-OECD) liberalisation in services that are seemingly considerably labour-intensive in delivery, the potential should be there for significant developing country gains from global liberalisation allowing full cross-border delivery. However, this picture is neither fully endorsed by available studies, neither is it explicitly contradicted. This seems to be the case for a number of reasons.One difficulty with the studies is that the conceptual underpinnings of what determines trade in services and how this trade differs analytically from that of trade in goods (if at all) is an issue prior to assessments of impacts of liberalisation of trade in services on developing countries being discussed. Key issues here are the treatment of mobility for service providers (both firms and workers), and the differing analytical structures needed to analyse individual service items (banking, insurance, telecoms, etc.). Some recent analytical work suggests that liber-alisation in some service items, such as banking, need not always yield gains, and this contrasts with quantitative studies where analytical structures mirror conventional trade in goods treatments.The discussion and measurement of barriers to service trade in both developed and developing countries is also problematic. One is talking of domestic regulation, entry barriers, portability of providers, competition policy regimes more so than only barriers at national borders, as with tariffs. Both representing and quantifying such barriers raise major difficulties, and these are also spelled out in the paper. Which barriers actually restrict trade, and which do not because they are redundant is one issue, for instance. It is also often misleading to represent barriers in simple ad valorem equivalent form. As a result, numerical modelling work on the effects of service trade barriers which is based on ad valorem equivalent modelling is often not fully convincing.In addition, individual country results vary considerably across studies in ways that it is frequently hard for outsiders to understand. Studies do, however, point towards a tentative conclusion that effects are small and positive for developed and most developing countries if FDI flow changes accompanying service trade liberalisation are excluded from the analysis, but much larger and more variable across countries if they are present. This could be taken to suggest that mode 3 GATS liberalisation (roughly captured in some studies) might be important for developing countries; but mode 4 GATS liberalisation could be even more important given large barriers to labour flows across countries. Thus, if service trade liberalisation is thought of primarily as a surrogate for improved functioning of global factor markets in which more capital flows to developing countries and more labour flows from them to developed countries, then developing countries could benefit in a major way from genuine two-sided (OECD/non-OECD) liberalisation. Developing countries fear, however, that in global negotiations on services liberalisation where there is an asymmetry of power that largely one-sided liberalisation may be the outcome, and their gains will be correspondingly limited. The paper concludes by evaluating econometric studies on linkage between services liberalisation and country growth rules, and briefly discusses some key sectoral issues in health services and transportation.

Notes: Books reviewed:DOUGLAS A. IRWIN, Free Trade Under FireBARBARA BLASZCZYK, IRAJ HOSHI and RICHARD WOODWARD (eds.), Secondary Privatisation in Transition Economies: The Evolution of Enterprise Ownership in the Czech Republic, Poland and SloveniaJAGDISH BHAGWATI (ed.), Going Alone: The Case for Relaxed Reciprocity in Freeing TradeTHEO S. EICHER and STEPHEN J. TURNOVSKY (eds.), Inequality and Growth: Theory and Policy Implications

Notes: The purpose of this paper is to study selected aspects of Turkish accession to the EU. Joining the EU will require that Turkey attains macroeconomic stability, adopts the Common Agricultural Policy, and liberalizes its services and network industries. Furthermore, joining the EU will require Turkey to adopt and implement the whole body of EU legislation and standards – the acquis communautaire. According to the EU membership criteria, new members must be able to demonstrate the ‘ability to take on the obligations of membership including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union’. Thus Turkey will be expected to adopt the euro when it is ready to do so, but not immediately upon accession. Integration will boost allocative efficiency in the Turkish economy which in turn will make the country a better place to invest. Furthermore, Turkey will reap the benefits from monetary integration and from migration of labour to the EU. But the welfare gains will have a price, and the price will be the adjustment costs associated with the adoption of the acquis communautaire. The final section of the paper considers the effects of accession on the EU in terms of migration and budgetary effects.

Notes: We examine in this paper the effects of WTO Accession on policy-making and institutional reforms in transition countries. This is done by looking at the experience of those transition countries which are already Members of the WTO and/or which have recently acceded. We start by trying to distinguish between effects of accession negotiations and from those which are the results of autonomous policy initiatives. The areas of domestic policy-making which are considered in the analysis include market access, governance, government budget, structural reforms, trade and investment arrangements with regional partners and macroeconomic management. We find that no precise blueprint of accession conditions can be ascertained and argue that the WTO played a role, albeit not an exclusive one, in the process of liberalisation. We also find that the costs of WTO Accession are not negligible, but that the benefits of WTO Membership are significant in terms of improved, more predictable, market access and its stability, improved governance and a recourse to better economic policies without significant loss to government revenues.

Notes: In large measure, the voice that developing countries were able to exercise in Cancun was a result of their effective coalition formation. In this paper we present a brief overview of the various coalitions that played an important role at Cancun. The greater part of this paper focuses on one among these various coalitions: the G20 on agriculture. The G20 presents an especially fascinating case of a coalition that combined a great diversity of members and apparently incompatible interests. All theoretical reasoning and historical precedent predicted that the group would collapse in the endgame. And yet the group survived. We investigate the sources of the unity of this group and trace them to a process of learning that allowed the group to acquire certain structural features and develop strategies that helped to cement it further. While our central dependent variable is the cohesion of the G20, we also address the derivative question of the costs and benefits of maintaining such coalitions. The Cancun coalitions give us an excellent case of coalitions that managed to retain their cohesion, but also ended up with a situation of no agreement rather than a fulfilment of even some of their demands. We examine some of the causes behind the impasse in the negotiation process and suggest ways in which future outcomes could be improved.

Notes: The use of anti-dumping policy has been steadily growing in recent decades, and so has the theoretical and empirical literature on anti-dumping. However, while developing countries as a whole have become at least as active as the ‘traditional’ anti-dumping regimes (the USA, the EU, Canada and Australia), the literature is almost exclusively concerned with the latter group. This article gives an overview of anti-dumping policy and practice in Mexico, one of the leading ‘new’ anti-dumping regimes. It assesses how anti-dumping has expanded since the country began liberalising trade in the mid-1980s, and discusses how the policy has been applied in a protectionist way that is not dissimilar to policy practice in the traditional user countries.

Notes: This paper sheds light on the risks associated with currency board arrangements, referring to the severe liquidity crisis that emerged in Argentina in November 2000. The inability of the Argentinean economy to grow because of an overvalued peso and the massive borrowing needs of the government in the context of rapidly rising borrowing costs seriously undermined the credibility of the fixed-exchange rate regime. Given the widespread dollarisation of the financial sector on the liability side, Argentina had arguably little choice but to stick to the currency board. A series of measures aimed at reviving growth were implemented but with no signs of upturn in demand, increasingly distrustful international investors and growing social unrest, the country was forced into default in December 2001, putting an abrupt end to its decade long experiment with hard money. This study shows that with rigid labour markets, a lack of fiscal discipline and the absence of a natural anchor currency, Argentina was never a strong candidate for a hard peg.

Notes: For FDI to help alleviate absolute poverty and stimulate economic growth in developing countries, two conditions have to be met. First, developing countries need to be attractive to foreign investors. Second, the host-country environment in which foreign investors operate must be conducive to favourable FDI effects with regard to overall investment, economic spillovers and income growth. This paper argues that it is more difficult to benefit from FDI than to attract FDI. The widely perceived concentration of FDI in few developing countries tends to obscure that, in relative terms, various small and poor countries are fairly attractive to FDI. Yet, the mobilisation of domestic resources remains by far, more important than attracting FDI for financing investment and stimulating economic growth. Furthermore, high inward FDI is no guarantee for poverty alleviation and positive growth effects. In particular, the empirical evidence suggests that host-country conditions typically prevailing in poor countries, including weak institutions and an insufficient endowment of complementary factors of production, constrain the growth-enhancing and poverty-alleviating effects of FDI. The crux is that creating an environment in which FDI may deliver social returns will take considerable time exactly where development needs are most pressing.

Notes: Prior to the onset of the Asian financial crisis there was a deterioration in the external trade position of most countries that were affected by the Asian currency crisis. However, little is known about why this occurred. This paper aims to identify the causes of a slowdown in export growth in Malaysia. While misaligned exchange rates have been widely cited as a cause of the slowdown in East Asia; in the Malaysian context at least a vulnerability to the downturn in the electronic cycle could also be a major factor leading to poor export performance. Using the US/yen dollar rate as a proxy for exchange rate misalignment and US total new orders for electronics as a proxy for global electronics demand, cointegration analysis was used to establish the likely causes of a slowdown in Malaysia's export performance. The empirical evidence suggests that the coincidence of exchange rate misalignment with a downturn in the global electronics demand cycle was responsible for the sharp deterioration in export performance.

Notes: Two basic views can be discerned in post-mortems of Argentina's currency board: (1) that weak fiscal policy was fundamentally to blame, and (2) that the peso had become too severely overvalued for the peg to survive. This paper evaluates the evidence for these rival interpretations. The real effective exchange rate index did not indicate massive overvaluation, but this index does not capture the effects on the equilibrium rate of the ‘sudden stop’ in capital flows to emerging markets after 1998. It also understates the amount of adjustment required for Argentina to reach the equilibrium rate, because neighbour countries’ dollar exchange rates were held up by Argentina's overvaluation, as is indicated by their depreciation in 2002. Argentina was particularly vulnerable to the sudden stop because of the extreme volatility of its portfolio inflows. Fiscal policy simulations suggest that, even with a substantially improved primary balance from 1994 onwards, loss of investor confidence would still have triggered unsustainable debt dynamics once the recession began to bite after 1998. The stagnation of output and prices in Argentina created a yawning gap between the interest rate on debt and the rate of growth of nominal GDP. Had the currency been floated in, say, 1995, the real devaluation of the peso would still have pushed up the debt/GDP ratio, but higher output would have left greater scope for addressing this by running a sizeable primary surplus. Moreover, the more gradual depreciation under floating might have allowed the economy to adjust to higher debt service payments without resort to default. The IMF has criticised itself for not pressing for tighter fiscal policy in the 1990s. A more fundamental criticism would be that it was seduced by the bipolar model into complacency about adjustment to real shocks and forgetting the teachings of optimum currency area theory.

Notes: Books reviewed:Robert E. Litan, Michael Pomerleano and V. Sundararjan (eds), The Future of Domestic Capital Markets in Developing CountriesPedro-Pablo Kuczynski and John Williamson (eds), After the Washington Consensus: Restarting Growth and Reform in Latin America

Notes: Democratising the governance of the IMF will significantly improve the institution's capacity to manage crises. The implementation of a democratic framework requires a reform of the Fund's ‘quota regime,’ which mediates the distribution of voting power. An optimal reform of the quota regime that reflects the increased weight of emerging economies requires matching the number of policy objectives with the number of policy instruments. Presently, there is a classic ‘assignment problem’ whereby one policy instrument (i.e., the quota regime) is aimed at achieving three objectives (i.e., member contribution obligations, access rights, and voting rights). Three different instruments need to be adopted. Member contributions should be based on member's capacity to pay; access to resources should be based on need; and voting rights should balance the rights of creditors with the principle of sovereign equality. These reforms will enhance the Fund's legitimacy and accountability as a forum for global economic policy-making.

Notes: This paper argues that the process of economic globalisation is to remain partial, because of its continued reliance upon the national institutions in charge of the definition and enforcement of private property rights. Emerging economies often face critical enforcement problems, but the experience of the European Single Market also suggests that, in this respect, institutional convergence remains extremely slow. Second, the globalisation process since 1990 has seen a sharp growth in private inter-temporal contracts, exemplified by private financial transactions and by contracting on intellectual property rights; both are much more vulnerable to local institutional failures than trade in tangible goods and sovereign credits, which were the hallmark of previous phases of international liberalisation. Thus the ‘frontier’ of globalisation now makes markets more exposed to the underlying fragmentation of national property institution than before. This suggests that multilateral negotiation, as an instrument for the coordination of State institutions, will remain the backbone of international economic integration.

Notes: This paper evaluates aid by considering how effective aid has been in exerting leverage on policy choices. It is rather easy to demonstrate that if a country is unwilling to implement policy reforms, attaching conditions to aid will not ensure sustained reform. In this sense conditionality does not work. This ignores the fact that donors, through aid and conditions, can influence recipient policies. The argument of this paper is that if the analysis focuses on channels of influence, one can better identify ways to enhance aid effectiveness. Reform is a slow and difficult process and donors would be more effective ‘development partners’ if they see their role as being to support rather than force this process. In simple terms, donors should provide the information and technical assistance to help governments to make policy choices, rather than dictating choices by imposing conditions.

Notes: While tariff barriers have decreased worldwide through various GATT rounds, anti-dumping has surged to play a crucial role as the most important non-tariff barrier. After much debate and opposition, anti-dumping is on the agenda of the Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations and it is one of the most important issues, especially for developing countries as they are the main targets of this policy instrument. With this prospect, it is important to assess the relevance of anti-dumping not only by focusing on traditional users but by analysing the experience of new users, which are now major players in the field. This paper improves upon existing studies by providing a comprehensive assessment on the use of anti-dumping. First, data on the time pattern of worldwide implementations of anti-dumping laws are presented. This time profile shows interesting relationships with legal developments in GATT and WTO dispositions. Second, usual sources of data are complemented with various other sources. This allows the inclusion of recent heavy users like China, Russia, Taiwan and Ukraine, which are ignored in similar studies but important for their trade volumes. This enlarged and updated dataset shows that new users are even more important than previously thought, with implications for the Doha negotiations.

Notes: This study sets out to estimate the impact of R&D on productivity within the private sector, with further analysis of the different impacts of R&D within high-tech and traditional manufacturing firms. We also attempt to examine the spillover effects from R&D investment in the high-tech sector on productivity growth within the traditional industries. Using a sample of 136 large manufacturing firms during the period 1994–2000, we develop an extended version of the Cobb-Douglas production function model, and our findings suggest that Taiwan's R&D investment had a significant impact on firm productivity growth, with output elasticity standing at around 0.18. When the sample is divided into high-tech and traditional firms, the R&D output elasticity in high-tech firms is significantly greater than that found in traditional firms. In addition, the average rate of return in high-tech firms is much greater than that estimated for other industries. Besides, our empirical results show that, although significant, the impact of R&D investment from the high-tech sector, on the productivity growth of traditional firms, is rather limited.