Cold Storage: Why Doha Failed

The WTO negotiations on agriculture were placed in cold storage in July 2008 although 18 of the 20 major agenda items had been agreed. The sticking point was the safeguard measures to control import surges, while the final issue, relating to domestic support for US cotton, was not addressed. Quantitative analysis of the numbers on the table indicate that improvements in market access in the European Union and Japan drive changes in exports and welfare, whereas special safeguard measures, export subsidies, domestic support and special products appear to be of lesser importance. Many developing countries, including most LDCs, would enjoy export gains but experience welfare losses because of higher import prices.

MAKING SENSE OF AGRICULTURAL TRADE POLICY REFORM

Proposals for agricultural trade reform put forward by the main protagonists remain far apart, with little sign of convergence. In an attempt to progress the negotiations towards a successful outcome, the chairman of the WTO Committee on Agriculture has proposed a compromise. The alternative proposals by the United States, the European Union and the WTO are analysed with the Agricultural Trade Policy Simulation Model, a static, multi-commodity, multi-region, partial equilibrium trade model. The estimated annual global welfare gains are $26 billion,$12 billion and $17 billion respectively. Least developed countries, as a group, gain from the US proposal but are made worse off under the WTO and EU proposals. Furthermore, in the best case many individual countries experience welfare losses. However, all countries enjoy increased export revenues and tariff revenues hold up quite well under the two less stringent proposals.agriculture, trade, modelling, negotiations, International Relations/Trade, F13, Q17,

Impact of Tariff Reductions in NAMA and Agriculture WTO Negotiations on GCC Common External Tariffs

The Gulf countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates) have a common external tariff that is unusually low with the exception of selected products such as alcohol and tobacco. As exporters of oil and gas and importers of agricultural products, the GCC is interested in the impacts of tariffs reductions in these products following the eventual completion of the Doha round. Of particular interest are four sectors (raw materials, gas-related goods, fisheries and chemicals), in which it is hoped tariffs will be eliminated. This will improve market access for the GCC countries, but it may also increase the competition depending on the initial bilateral tariffs. In agriculture, rising import prices driven by policy changes occurring elsewhere will increase import costs in the GCC countries. Potential gains and losses are identified using a bilateral trade model.International Relations/Trade,

Do Sensitive Products Undermine Ambition?

The long-running WTO negotiations remain unresolved. Agriculture is the main stumbling block. Members have agreed to linear tariff reductions within bands, but proposed exemptions for sensitive products, while providing for much needed flexibility, threaten to undermine the ambition. A detailed partial equilibrium global agricultural trade model is used to analyse the likely impact of exemptions from the formula tariff reductions. Applying one third of the formula cuts to the five per cent of lines with the highest tariffs increases the final developed country average agricultural tariff from 16 to 24 per cent but the negative impacts on trade and welfare are less dramatic.agriculture, trade, tariffs, WTO, International Relations/Trade, F13, Q17,

Employment effects of work sharing: an econometric analysis for West Germany

In this paper we estimate the employment effects of a reduction in weekly normal hours in West German manufacturing on the basis of an econometric models using industry panel data. We distinguish between unskilled, skilled and high-skilled workers and show that labor demand elasticities with respect to real wages differ significantly between these three skill groups. Given wages, the direct employment effect of a reduction in weekly normal hours is negligible for all three groups. However, taking the adjustment of wages into account, which compensates workers to some extent for lost income due to the reduction of working hours, the net employment effect becomes negative on average. Due to their relatively large wage elasticity, this negative effect is particularly strong for the unskilled. ?Work sharing? by means of general hours-reductions can thus not be considered an adequate policy to reduce unemployment. --

Direct and indirect linkages between non-tariff measures and the SDGs

This post is part of the IGC, South Asia @ LSE and Africa @ LSE cross-blog series on the Sustainable Development Goals. In this blog, Christian Knebel and Ralf Peters explore the role of trade sustainability in achieving the new SDGs

Detecting Fake Reviews: Just a Matter of Data

Along with the ever-increasing portfolio of products online, the incentive for market participants to write fake reviews to gain a competitive edge has increased as well. This article demonstrates the effectiveness of using different combinations of spam detection features to detect fake reviews other than the review-based features typically used. Using a spectrum of feature sets offers greater accuracy in identifying fake reviews than using review-based features only, and using a machine learning algorithm for classification and different amounts of feature sets further elucidates the difference in performance. Results compared by benchmarking show that applying a technique prioritizing feature importance benefits from prioritizing features from multiple feature sets and that creating feature sets based on reviews, reviewers and product data can achieve the greatest accuracy

Detecting Offensive Statements towards Foreigners in Social Media

Recently, politicians and media companies identified an increasing number of offensive statements directed against foreigners and refugees in Europe. In Germany, for example, the political group “Pegida” drew international attention by frequently publishing offensive content concerning the religion of Islam. As a consequence, the German government and the social network Facebook cooperate to address this problem by creating a task force to manually detect offensive statements towards refugees and foreigners. In this work, we propose an approach to automatically detect such statements aiding personnel in this labor-intensive task. In contrast to existing work, we assess severity values to offensive statements and identify the referenced targets. This way, we are able to selectively detect hostility towards foreigners. To evaluate our approach, we develop a dataset containing offensive statements including their target. As a result, a substantial amount of offensive statements and a moderate amount of the referenced victims was detected correctly

Export restrictions do not help the fight against COVID-19

Why are poorer countries finding it so hard to get hold of vaccines? Export restrictions are key pieces in the puzzle, say Ralf Peters and Divya Prabhakar (UNCTAD), and will require serious consideration at the World Trade Organization