Trade policy on a country basis and multilateral arrangements: The case of Uruguay

This paper sheds some light on two issues related to recent the multilateral trade agreements (Ronda Uruguay of GATT and the creation of WTO). First, are they binding for the design of trade policies in Uruguay? Second, how have they posed restrictions on these policies? In the first chapter a revision of the trade policies developed in Uruguay along the last decades is done, with a historic perspective. It is there concluded that Uruguay has had a continuous unilateral pro-liberalization position. The description of government institutions and private lobby groups is used in the second section to analyze the process. There is enough evidence supporting the hypothesis that the trade liberalization process can be thought of as a political equilibrium between government and private lobby groups. Finally, the paper concludes that multilateral agreements are increasingly determining the characteristics of trade policies in Uruguay.

Brazil, the GATT, and the WTO: history and prospects

1. Brazil and the GATT, 1947-1980 Early years: GATT and ITO The first 20 years: rich men’s club and free riders Brazil and the Tokyo Round 2. Skirmishes before the Uruguay Round, 1980-86 3. The Uruguay Round, 1986-1994 4. Brazil and the GATT, 1980-1994 5. Brazil and the WTO after the Uruguay Round, 1994-1998 6. Brazilian diplomacy in the GATT and the WTO 7. Perspectives

Informe : medio ambiente y energía en Uruguay : aspectos de la temática energética desde una visión ambiental

Bibliografía p. 106-107La presente consultoría se enmarca en los lineamientos establecidos en el iii Plan Director de la Cooperación Española 2009-2012: sector Medio Ambiente, Desarrollo Sostenible y Lucha contra el Cambio Climático y el Marco de Asociación País firmado en febrero 2011 por España y Uruguay, a través del cual se determina Medio Ambiente y Cambio Climático como uno de los sectores prioritarios de la cooperación en los siguientes cuatro años. Dentro de este sector, una de las cuatro líneas de acción es Desarrollo de Energías Renovables y Promoción de la Eficiencia Energética

Historical learning in the design of WTO rules: the EC sugar case

The Uruguay Round Agreement made significant changes to the governance of international trade. Trade rules and dispute settlement mechanisms were altered and a series of specific agreements provided for liberalisation across economic sectors. The Agreement on Agriculture, arguably the most difficult and contentious to negotiate, permitted the continued use of trade-distorting instruments, both domestically and at the border. Rule-enforcement in agriculture therefore relies crucially on the clarity of the rules. This paper provides an in-depth study of a unique and critical case for understanding the new rules: the EC sugar regime. This policy was challenged unsuccessfully under the pre-Uruguay Round rules, but successfully under the new rules. This case is particularly valuable in allowing us to isolate the effect of the Uruguay Round on agricultural trade disputes: the policy under challenge was essentially unchanged and the legal actions addressed the same concern – excessive export subsidisation. Drawing on primary and secondary materials and interviews with key policy actors, sugar is used to illustrate how those involved in the multilateral process learned from particular rule weaknesses revealed in earlier cases, revising those rules in the Uruguay Round in such a way that dispute panels can more readily and objectively determine rule breaches

Informe : medio ambiente y energía en Uruguay : aspectos de la temática energética desde una visión ambiental

Bibliografía p. 106-107La presente consultoría se enmarca en los lineamientos establecidos en el iii Plan Director de la Cooperación Española 2009-2012: sector Medio Ambiente, Desarrollo Sostenible y Lucha contra el Cambio Climático y el Marco de Asociación País firmado en febrero 2011 por España y Uruguay, a través del cual se determina Medio Ambiente y Cambio Climático como uno de los sectores prioritarios de la cooperación en los siguientes cuatro años. Dentro de este sector, una de las cuatro líneas de acción es Desarrollo de Energías Renovables y Promoción de la Eficiencia Energética

Human development and inequality in the 20th Century : the Mercosur countries in a comparative perspective

This article is in line with the United Nations attempts to approach human development in wider terms than per capita GDP, and in line with an ever lively debate on the historical standard of living and on the role of inequality in development. We focus on three Mercosur countries (Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay) and we view them in comparison with four core countries (France, Germany, USA and UK) along the 20th Century. The paper makes different attempts to construct diverse indices and to change the weights of their different components in order to better explain human development in different periods. A contribution of the paper, so long limited to Uruguay and the USA, is to adjust the historical human development index by inequality measures for all of its components. The results show that Argentine started to diverge, even in human development, at early stages of the 20th Century; that Uruguay diverged from the mid-century and that Brazil continued to tighten the gap up to 1980, diverging afterwards without being able to come close to the levels of the core countries. Total inequality in Uruguay and USA showed similar levels and trends: it decreased until the 1950s, and increased afterwards to similar levels. While inequality affects human development within both countries, it doesn?t help to understand the differences between them, due to the mentioned similarity of the Gini-coefficients

Buck-I-SERV: Uruguay

STEP Category: Service-Learning and Community ServiceSTEP Expo poster about Buck-I-SERV experience in Uruguay.The Ohio State University Second-year Transformational Experience Program (STEP)Academic Major: Computer Science and Engineerin

Monitoring the Socio-Economic Conditions in Uruguay

This document is the first of a series of reports on the socio-economic situation in Uruguay. It is mainly based on a wide range of distributional, labor and social statistics computed from microdata collected by the Encuesta Continua de Hogares (ECH) from 1989 to 2003. Data has also been drawn from other sources and the existing literature. In contrast to the significant advances in poverty reduction recorded since the mid-eighties, in the last years Uruguay witnessed a deterioration of distributional, labor and social conditions. However, the country’s social performance is still one of the best in the region.poverty, inequality, education, labor, wages, employment, Uruguay

Meeting the Poverty-Reduction MDG in the Southern Cone

This paper assesses the likelihood of meeting the Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by 2015 in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. We simulate the poverty impact of changes in growth rates and redistributive policies, and trace the poverty consequences of various alternative economic scenarios using microeconometric decompositions. Sustainable and vigorous productivity growth seems to be a necessary condition to meet the poverty MDG by 2015 in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. The required growth rate could be significantly lower if some modest well-targeted redistribution could be performed. In contrast to its neighbors, Chile has already achieved the poverty MDG.MDG, poverty, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay

Post-Uruguay Round price linkages between developed and developing countries

The Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture attempted to lower distortions in the global agricultural markets. However, the significant fall in commodity prices in late 1990s may have reduced the incentives for both developed and developing countries to better integrate into the world markets. This study analyzes price linkages and adjustment between developed and developing countries during the post-Uruguay Round period. Prices of two key commodity markets, long-grain rice and medium-hard wheat, are assembled for major exporters and producers. Results from the multivariate cointegration analysis suggest partial market integration between developed and developing countries in the post-Uruguay Round period. Developed countries are found to be price leaders in these two markets, and in most cases, the changes in their prices have relatively large impacts on those of the developing countries. The new entrants into world markets (Vietnam and Argentina) have faced considerable price adjustment due to changes in the developed countries' prices.Price linkages ,Wheat markets ,Rice markets ,Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) ,Doha Developmental Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) ,