An Impact Study of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) in the Six ACP Regions

This article intends to present a very detailed analysis of the trade-related aspects of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) negotiations. We use a dynamic partial equilibrium model – focusing on the demand side – at the HS6 level (covering 5,113 HS6 products). Two alternative lists of sensitive products are constructed, one giving priority to the agricultural sectors, the other focusing on tariff revenue preservation. In order to be WTO compatible, EPAs must translate into 90 percent of bilateral trade fully liberalised. We use this criterion to simulate EPAs for each negotiating regional block. ACP exports to the EU are forecast to be 10 percent higher with the EPAs than under the GSP/EBA option. On average ACP countries are forecast to lose 70 percent of tariff revenues on EU imports in the long run. Yet imports from other regions of the world will continue to provide tariff revenues. Thus when tariff revenue losses are computed on total ACP imports, losses are limited to 26 percent on average in the long run and even 19 percent when the product lists are optimised. The final impact on the economy depends on the importance of tariffs in government revenue and on potential compensatory effects. However this long term and less visible effect will mainly depend on the capacity of each ACP country to reorganise its fiscal base.Preferential Trade Agreements, Africa, EPAs, Partial Equilibrium Simulations, International Relations/Trade,

Introduction

De-industrialization was accelerated by the 2008-2009 crisis in most high income countries. Yet the trend began decades earlier, as comparative advantage of emerging economies shifted towards more advanced goods and their growing populations commanded an increasing share in global demand. This shift towards a factory-free economy in high income countries has drawn the attention of policy makers in North America and Europe. Some politicians have articulated alarming views, initiating mercantilist or beggar thy neighbor cost-competitiveness policies. Yet companies like Apple, which concentrates research and design innovations at home but no longer has any factories in the United States, may be the norm in the future

International Trade and Rent Sharing in Developed and Developing countries.

In this paper, we derive then test a theoretical equation, based on rent sharing theories, linking industry wages to openness variables. This relation has three main features: 1/ it can be easily confronted to the data. 2/ it allows for both impacts of import and export variables to be properly considered in a same testable wage equation. 3/ it stresses explicitly the role of imperfect market structures of goods and labor, as well as their interaction, when studying wages' response to openness. We construct a dataset that provides together trade, activity and labor related data for around 29 industries and 65 countries between 1981 and 1997. We find, for OECD countries, that an increase in export as well as domestic market shares is associated with growth in wages in roughly half of the industries. Among developing countries, Mediterranean followed by Latin American countries, are those where such phenomenon of rent-sharing can be observed. This does not seem to be the case in Asia however.

Politiques commerciales

Apres l’echec retentissant de Seattle, la Ministerielle de Doha (novembre 2001) a permis de lancer un cycle de negociations commerciales susceptibles de faire avancer un certain nombre de dossiers importants, tout en tentant d’apporter des reponses aux questions posees par la societe civile : traitement reserve aux pays en developpement, notamment les PMA, champ d’application des droits de propriete intellectuelle, prise en compte des exigences de developpement durable, specialisation des institutions (et renvoi des normes sociales a l’OIT)…

Parental and early-feeding effects of dietary methionine in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)

We studied the effect of changes in dietary methionine (Met) supply in broodstock and first-feeding rainbow trout fry (offspring). Three plant-based diets differing in Met level (deficient, adequate or in excess of the established requirement) were fed to the broodstock (male and female) for 6 months prior to spawning (diets BD, BA and BE, respectively). The offspring from the parental Met-groups was then challenged in turn with the different Met fry-diets (FD, FA and FE, respectively) for 3 weeks from first-feeding. At spawning, females fed diet BD had significantly higher plasma total and LDL-cholesterol and slightly lower plasma triacylglycerol. Diet BD reduced female (but not male) growth, weight of spawn and egg size, but had no effect on relative fecundity. The free amino acid profile of oocytes was modified, with levels of Met and Cys correlating positively with the Met-levels of broodstock diets. SAM and SAH levels in oocytes followed the same pattern, as opposed to SAM/SAH ratio. At the swim-up stage, no significant effect of parental diet on fry weight was noted, whereas survival was the highest in fry from BE-broodstock. The subsequent 21-day fry feeding with different Met levels highly affected the daily growth index with a significant interaction between the parental-diet and fry-diet effects. The expression of a number of genes regulating sulfur amino acid metabolism was modified either directly by the dietary Met supply in both broodstock liver and in whole fry (e.g. BHMT1, GR, GST pi, MsrA1) or indirectly by the parental Met intakes as seen in the swim-up fry (e.g. BHMT1, MTR, GST pi, MsrA1). Importantly, long-lasting parental effects linked to broodstock Met-intake were seen in the fry, 21-days after first-feeding and irrespective of the fry diet (CTH, MsrA1, MsrB2, SOD2). Similarly, parental effects were noted on the gene expression of both NPY and POMC feeding peptides in fry prior to exogenous feeding which persisted for POMC in the 21-day fry. Parental effects were also demonstrated on the key myogenic gene Myog, on fMHC and GDH in swim-up fry, which persisted for GDH in 21-day fry. In summary, our results demonstrate that dietary Met levels of rainbow trout broodstock affect various traits in the offspring, some of which persisted during the first weeks of exogenous feeding. Further studies need to evaluate the long-term persistence of the parental effects over time and to elucidate the mechanisms, whether epigenetic or not. Statement of relevance: Determining the multiple effects of dietary methionine levels on reproductive, growth performance and metabolism in offspring will help improve formulations of low fish meal feeds for rainbow trout at sensitive life cycle stages. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.EU [288925]F.C.T., Portugal - Fundo Social Europeu (POCH) and National Funds [SFRH/BPD/108389/2015]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Firms' Main Market, Human Capital and Wages

Recent international trade literature emphasizes two features in characterizing the current patterns of trade: efficiency heterogeneity at the firm level and quality differentiation. This paper explores human capital and wage differences across firms in that context. We build a partial equilibrium model predicting that firms selling in more-remote markets employ higher human capital and pay higher wages to employees within each education group. The channel linking these variables is firms’ endogenous choice of quality. Predictions are tested using Spanish employer-employee matched data that classify firms according to four main destination markets: local, national, European Union, and rest of the World. Employees’ average education is increasing in the remoteness of firm’s main output market. Market–destination wage premia are large, increasing in the remoteness of the market, and increasing in individual education. These results suggest that increasing globalization may play a significant role in raising wage inequality within and across education groups

Assessing market attractiveness for mergers and acquisitions: the M&A Attractiveness Index Score

This paper presents a new scoring methodology designed to measure a country's capability to attract and sustain business investment activity in the forms of cross-border inflow and domestic mergers and acquisitions (M&A). We compute a theoretically grounded Index of Attractiveness for M&A purposes based on groups of country development factors which have been identified as key drivers of corporate investment activity in economics, finance and management literature. By using the Index, which has been successfully tested against country-level M&A activity in a time series analysis, we show that the drivers of M&A activity differ significantly at different stages of country maturity. Specifically, for mature countries, the quality of their regulatory systems, political stability, socio-economic environment and the sophistication of their physical infrastructure as well as the availability of sizeable assets all determine differences in country-level M&A volume and value activity. For countries at the transitional stage, it is instead their economic and financial health, socio-economic environment, technological developments and the quality of their infrastructure and the availability of sizeable assets which drive M&A activity. We also prove the predictability power of the Index, by a set of Granger causality tests, showing not only how country-level development drives future M&A activity but also how, to some extent, the inverse relationship is also true, i.e. that M&A activity can contribute to country development