Trade preferences and differential treatment of developing countries : a selective survey

Nonreciprocal trade preferences and provisions in the GATT/WTO that allow developing countries greater leeway to retain or use protectionist policies are two of the central planks of so-called special and differential treatment (SDT) for developing countries in the multilateral trading system. The authors survey the literature on the rationales, institutional features, and economic effectiveness of SDT. A large literature has emerged on SDT in the past 50 years, by both proponents and opponents. They summarize a number of key contributions on the subject, with a special emphasis on the evaluation of the impact of SDT, especially preferential market access. The issue of SDT has become very topical again, following a period during which it was viewed as an outdated concept for the multilateral trading system. The authors therefore devote attention as well to a number of recent contributions that discuss (1) whetherthere is a continued need for SDT, and (2) how this might be designed from both a development (recipient) objective and from the perspective of the trading system more generally. A major theme of the survey is that most of the issues that are debated today were already being discussed in the 1960s. The authors conclude that those who questioned the value of unilateral preferences have proven to be prescient.TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Trade Policy,Trade and Regional Integration

Loss aversion and trade policy

This paper provides new survey evidence showing that loss aversion and reference dependence are important in shaping people's perception of trade policy. Under the assumption that agents'welfare functions exhibit these behavioral elements, we analyze a model with a welfare-maximizing government and with the lobbying framework of Grossman and Helpman (1994). The policy implications of the augmented models differ in three important ways. One, there is a region of compensating protection, where a decline in the world price leads to an offsetting increase in protection, such that a constant domestic price is maintained. Two, protection following a single negative price shock will be persistent. Three, irrespective of the extent of lobbying, there will be a deviation from free trade that tends to favor loss-making industries. The augmented models are more consistent with the observed structure of protection, and in particular, explain why many trade policy instruments are explicitly designed to maintain prices at a given level.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Markets and Market Access,Environmental Economics&Policies,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Markets and Market Access

The Euro-mediterranean partnership : trade in services as an alternative to migration ?

This paper discusses options to facilitate movement of workers between high-income and developing countries within the framework of trade agreements, focusing on the European Union’s partnership agreements with neighboring countries. Existing frameworks for cooperation offer the possibility of expanding temporary rather than longer-term or permanent movement of workers since extant trade agreements provide scope for negotiating specific market access commitments for services, including those delivered through the cross-border movement of natural persons. Even though the potential for such"embodied"trade in services will not be anywhere near what would be associated with substantial liberalization of migration regimes, furthering the services trade dimension in the European Union’s ¬trade agreements offers significant potential Pareto gains. For the partner countries these gains from temporary movement of service providers are both direct - through greater employment in/revenue from providing services in the European Union - and indirect - by helping to increase and sustain higher growth at home.Population Policies,Labor Markets,Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,Labor Policies,Housing&Human Habitats

Diasporas

Migration flows are shaped by a complex combination of self-selection and out-selection mechanisms. In this paper, the authors analyze how existing diasporas (the stock of people born in a country and living in another one) affect the size and human-capital structure of current migration flows. The analysis exploits a bilateral data set on international migration by educational attainment from 195 countries to 30 developed countries in 1990 and 2000. Based on simple micro-foundations and controlling for various determinants of migration, the analysis finds that diasporas increase migration flows, lower the average educational level and lead to higher concentration of low-skill migrants. Interestingly, diasporas explain the majority of the variability of migration flows and selection. This suggests that, without changing the generosity of family reunion programs, education-based selection rules are likely to have a moderate impact. The results are highly robust to the econometric techniques, accounting for the large proportion of zeros and endogeneity problems.Population Policies,Voluntary and Involuntary Resettlement,Human Migrations&Resettlements,Anthropology,International Migration

Does Turkish child-directed speech predict the acquisition order of wh-questions?

Does Turkish child-directed speech predict the acquisition order of wh-questions? The very early studies about children’s acquisition of questions have provided a cognition-based rationale. They claimed that “why” and “when” are acquired later than “what” and “where” because of their cognitive constraints (Bloom et al. 1982) However; in the follow-up studies, it is found that as well as cognitive perspective, there are two other explanations. One of these is the syntactic function of the wh-word, whereas the other is about the semantic generality of the main verb (Bloom et al. 1982). This point of view has highlighted the role of complexity on children’s acquisition of question. According to this; “what” and “where” are firstly acquired through the copula. Secondly, they are used with semantically general verbs. Then, wh-sententials along with descriptive verbs are used. However, this account based on that order has been challenged by Clancy’s explanation (1989). It is claimed that frequency of wh-word and verbs in child-directed speech can be a significant factor on acquisition of question (Rowland et al. 2003). In a longitudinal study with 12 English children and their mothers, it was found that input frequency of wh-questions and verb combinations was a powerful predictor when compared to linguistic complexity (Rowland et al. 2003). In the light of these discussions, the study aims at investigating Turkish child-directed speech in terms of its role on children’s acquisition of questions and at evaluating the role of cognitive/linguistic complexity account on acquisition of questions. This research was based on the naturalistic data of 9 one- to three-year old children and their mothers. References Bloom, L., Merkin, S. & Wootten, J. (1982). Wh-questions: linguistic factors that contribute to the sequence of acquisition. Child Development, 53, 1084-1092. Clancy, P. (1989). Form and function in the acquisition of Korean wh-questions. Journal of Child Language, 16, 323-347. Rowland, C., & Pine, J. (2000). Subject-auxiliary inversion errors and wh- question acquisition: what children do know? Journal of Child Language, 27, 157-181. Rowland, C., Pine, J. Lieven, E. Theakston, A. (2003). Determinants of acquisition order in wh- questions: re-evaluating the role of caregiver speech. Journal of Child Language, 30, 609-63

The Wage Effects of Immigration and Emigration

In this paper, we simulate the long-run effects of migrant flows on wages of high-skilled and low-skilled non-migrants in a set of countries using an aggregate representation of national economies. We focus on Europe and compare the outcomes for large Western European countries with those of other key destination countries both in the OECD and outside the OECD. Our analysis builds on an improved database of bilateral stocks and net migration flows of immigrants and emigrants by education level for the years 1990 through 2000. We find that all European countries experienced a decrease in their average wages and a worsening of their wage inequality because of emigration. Whereas, immigration had nearly equal but opposite effects. These patterns hold true using a range of parameters for our simulations, accounting for the estimates of undocumented immigrants, and correcting for the quality of schooling and/or labor-market downgrading of skills. In terms of economic outcomes, it follows that prevalent public fears in European countries are misplaced; immigration has had a positive average wage effect on native workers. These concerns would be more properly focused on the wage effect of emigration.Immigration, Emigration, Complementarity, Schooling Externalities, Average Wage, Wage inequality

Diaspora effects in international migration : key questions and methodological issues

This paper reviews the existing literature on the impact of migrants networks on the patterns of international migration. It covers the theoretical channels at stake in the global effect of the networks. It identifies the key issues, namely the impact on size, selection and concentration of the migration flows. The paper also reviews the empirical hurdles that the researchers face in assessing the importance of networks. The key issues concern the choice of micro vs a macro approach, the definition of a network, the access to suitable data and the adoption of econometric methods accounting for the main features of those data. Finally, the paper reports a set of estimation outcomes reflecting the main findings of the macro approach.Population Policies,Voluntary and Involuntary Resettlement,Human Migrations&Resettlements,International Migration,Anthropology

Saving Connecticut One Mattress at a Time: a Real-Life Case Study at to Improve Mattress Recycling Process at Park City Green

UB School of Engineering has partnered with the PCG to increase their operational efficiency in addition to finding alternative markets for their raw materials. Possible expansion plans are also discussed and included in addition to other improvement opportunities. This study introduces the motivation behind the study while reporting on the findings of this collaborative research

The perversity of preferences : GSP and developing country trade policies, 1976 - 2000

Industrial countries maintain special tariff preferences, namely the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), for importsfrom developing countries. Critics have highlighted the underachieving nature of such preferences, but developing countries continue to place the GSP at the heart of their agenda in multilateral negotiations. What effect do such preferences have on a recipient's own trade policies? The authors develop and test a simple theoretical model of a small country's trade policy choice, using a dataset of 154 developing countries from 1976 through 2000. They find that countries removed from the GSP adopt more liberal trade policies than those remaining eligible. The results, corrected for endogeneity and robust to numerous alternative measures of trade policy, suggest that developing countries may be best served by full integration into the reciprocity-based world trade regime rather than continued GSP-style special preferences.Environmental Economics&Policies,Trade Policy,Economic Theory&Research,Rules of Origin,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Trade Policy,Trade and Regional Integration