New PPP-Based Estimates of Renminbi Undervaluation and Policy Implications

New estimates by Arvind Subramanian for the undervaluation of the Chinese currency based on the purchasing power parity (PPP) approach find that the renminbi is undervalued by approximately 30 percent rather than the 12 percent widely reported. Subramanian applies new insights about the way PPP data are compiled, uses new data that have become available, and corrects existing estimates for the biases in the data in order to attain a more accurate estimation of China's currency undervaluation. Corrective action must be taken not primarily to help China but to prevent its currency undervaluation from harming the rest of the world. The real victims of China's currency policies, argues Subramanian, are other emerging-market and developing countries because they compete more closely with China. It is crucial that the subject be broached delicately and with humility and that a multilateral approach be taken with China, most likely by going through the World Trade Organization.

The Mauritian Success Story and its Lessons

This paper examines different explanations.initial conditions, openness to trade and FDI, and institutions.of the Mauritian growth experience since the mid-1970s. We show that arguments based on openness to trade and FDI are either misleading or incomplete. Even when correctly articulated, openness appears to be a proximate rather than an underlying explanation for the Mauritian experience. The institution-based explanation offers greater promise. Ultimately, however, the econometric results indicate that existing explanations may be incomplete. Some idiosyncratic factors, particularly Mauritian diversity and the responses to managing it, may provide the missing pieces in the story of Mauritius.s success.Mauritius; growth; institutions, openness

Renminbi Rules: The Conditional Imminence of the Reserve Currency Transition

Against the backdrop of the recent financial crisis and the ongoing rapid changes in the world economy, the fate of the dollar as the premier international reserve currency is under scrutiny. This paper attempts to answer whether the Chinese renminbi will eclipse the dollar, what will be the timing of, and the prerequisites for this transition, and which of the two countries controls the outcome. The key finding, based on analyzing the last 110 years, is that the size of an economy—measured not just in terms of GDP but also trade and the strength of the external financial position—is the key fundamental correlate of reserve currency status. Further, the conventional view that sterling persisted well beyond the strength of the UK economy is overstated. Although the United States overtook the United Kingdom in terms of GDP in the 1870s, it became dominant in a broader sense encompassing trade and finance only at the end of World War I. And since the dollar overtook sterling in the mid-1920s, the lag between currency dominance and economic dominance was about 10 years rather than the 60-plus years traditionally believed. Applying these findings to the current context suggests that the renminbi could become the premier reserve currency by the end of this decade, or early next decade. But China needs to fulfill a number of conditions—making the reniminbi convertible and opening up its financial system to create deep and liquid markets—to realize renminbi preeminence. China seems to be moving steadily in that direction, and renminbi convertibility will proceed apace not least because it offers China's policymakers a political exit out of its mercantilist growth strategy. The United States cannot in any serious way prevent China from moving in that direction.Reserve Currency, Dollar, Sterling, Renminbi, China

Criss-Crossing Globalization: Uphill Flows of Skill-Intensive Goods and Foreign Direct Investment

This paper documents an unusual and possibly significant phenomenon: the export of skills, embodied in goods, services or capital from poorer to richer countries. We first present a set of stylized facts. Using a measure which combines the sophistication of a country’s exports with the average income level of destination countries, we show that the performance of a number of developing countries,notably China, Mexico and South Africa, matches that of much more advanced countries, such as Japan, Spain and USA. Creating a new combined dataset on FDI (covering greenfield investment as well as mergers and acquisitions) we show that flows of FDI to OECD countries from developing countries like Brazil, India, Malaysia and South Africa as a share of their GDP, are as large as flows from countries like Japan, Korea and the US. Then, taking the work of Hausmann et al. (2007) as a point of departure, we suggest that it is not just the composition of exports but their destination that matters. In both cross-sectional and panel regressions, with a range of controls, we find that a measure of uphill flows of sophisticated goods is significantly associated with better growth performance. These results suggest the need for a deeper analysis of whether development benefits might derive not from deifying comparative advantage but from defying it.foreign direct investment; globalization; skill flow; economic development

Egypt and the Uruguay Round

The Uruguay Round will generally have a limited impact on Egyptian policies affecting goods, investment, and services. It will have a more significant impact on intellectual property, although this will take up to a decade to materialize fully. Insofar as this reflects a continuing defensiveness against liberalization, it does not bode well for a country that will be facing growing competitive pressures as the world economy becomes more integrated. But Egypt's Uruguay Round commitments do, to a large extent, lock in the policy changes pursued by the government since the late 1980s. In this respect, they are quite significant. Maximum tariffs have been established for almost all tariff lines, and the gap between these"bindings"and the level of applied tariffs is in most cases relatively small. This constitutes a level of commitment that substantially exceeds that developing country average. The government is negotiating a more far-reaching agreement with the European Union to liberalize trade on a reciprocal basis. Commitments by Egypt in the Uruguay Round can be seen as facilitating implementation of a Euro-Mediterranean Agreement. Such an agreement could facilitate further nondiscriminatory liberalization of Egypt's trade regime. Of particular importance in this connection is opening service markets to greater competition, where much remains to be done.Rules of Origin,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Labor Policies,Economic Theory&Research,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Rules of Origin,Environmental Economics&Policies,Trade and Regional Integration

China and the world trading system

The World Trade Organization has been until recently an effective framework for cooperation because it has continually adapted to changing economic realities. The current Doha Agenda is an aberration because it does not reflect one of the largest shifts in the international economic and trading system: the rise of China. Although China will have a stake in maintaining trade openness, an initiative that builds on but redefines the Doha Agenda would anchor China more fully in the multilateral trading system. Such an initiative would have two pillars. The first is a new negotiating agenda that would include the major issues of interest to China and its trading partners, and thus unleash the powerful reciprocal liberalization mechanism that has driven the World Trade Organization process to previous successes. The second is new restraints on bilateralism and regionalism that would help preserve incentives for maintaining the current broadly non-discriminatory trading order.Emerging Markets,Economic Theory&Research,Free Trade,Debt Markets,Trade Law

A China Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations

Until recently, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been an eff ective framework for cooperation because it has continually adapted to changing economic realities. Th e current Doha Agenda is an aberration because it does not refl ect one of the biggest shifts in the international economic and trading system: the rise of China. Even though China will have a stake in maintaining trade openness, an initiative that builds on but redefi nes the Doha Agenda would anchor China more fully in the multilateral trading system. Such an initiative would have two pillars. First, a new negotiating agenda that would include the major issues of interest to China and its trading partners, and thus unleash the powerful reciprocal liberalization mechanism that has driven the WTO process to previous successes. Second, new restraints on bilateralism and regionalism that would help preserve incentives for maintaining the current broad non-discriminatory trading order.China, trade, multilateralism, WTO, Doha Agenda

From "Hindu Growth" to Productivity Surge: The Mystery of the Indian Growth Transition

Most conventional accounts of India's recent economic performance associate the pick-up in economic growth with the liberalization of 1991. This paper demonstrates that the transition to high growth occured around 1980, a full decade before economic liberalization. We investigate a number of hypotheses about the causes of this growth favorable external environment, fiscal stimulus, trade liberalization, internal liberalization, the green revolution, public investment and find them wanting. We argue that growth was triggered by an attitudinal shift on the part of the national government towards a pro-business (as opposed to pro-liberalization) approach. We provide some evidence that is consistent with this argument. We also find that registered manufacturing built up in previous decades played an important role in influencing the pattern of growth across the Indian states.

Currency Undervaluation and Sovereign Wealth Funds: A New Role for the World Trade Organization

Two aspects of global imbalances—undervalued exchange rates and sovereign wealth funds (SWFs)—require a multilateral response. For reasons of inadequate leverage and eroding legitimacy, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has not been effective in dealing with undervalued exchange rates. We propose new rules in the World Trade Organization (WTO) to discipline cases of significant undervaluation that are clearly attributable to government action. The rationale for WTO involvement is that there are large trade consequences of undervalued exchange rates, which act as both import tariffs and export subsidies, and that the WTO's enforcement mechanism is credible and effective. The WTO would not be involved in exchange rate management, and our proposals do not entail the WTO displacing the IMF: Rather, they would harness the comparative advantage of the two institutions, with the IMF providing the essential technical expertise in the WTO enforcement process. On SWFs, there is a bargain to be struck between countries with SWFs, which want secure and liberal access for their capital, and capital-importing countries that have concerns about the objectives and operations of SWFs. The WTO is the natural place to strike this bargain. Its services agreement, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), already covers investments by SWFs, and other agreements offer a precedent for designing disciplines for SWFs. Placing exchange rates and SWFs on the trade negotiating agenda may help revive the Doha Round by rekindling the interest of a wide variety of groups, many of whom are currently disengaged from the round.exchange rates, undervaluation, sovereign wealth funds, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund

Multilateralism Beyond Doha

There is a fundamental shift taking place in the world economy to which the multilateral trading system has failed to adapt. The Doha process focused on issues of limited significance while the burning issues of the day were not even on the negotiating agenda. The paper advances five propositions: (i) the traditional negotiating dynamic, driven by private sector interests largely in the rich countries, is running out of steam; (ii) the world economy is moving broadly from conditions of relative abundance to relative scarcity, and so economic security has become a paramount concern for consumers, workers, and ordinary citizens; (iii) international economic integration can contribute to enhanced security; (iv) addressing these new concerns – relating to food, energy and economic security - requires a wider agenda of multilateral cooperation, involving not just the WTO but other multilateral institutions; and (v) despite shifts in economic power across countries, the commonality of interests and scope for give-and-take on these new issues make multilateral cooperation worth attempting.WTO, Doha, trade, security