Suchergebnisse

Some see trade in services as irrelevant to the development agenda for least developed countries (LDCs). Others see few benefits from past market openings by LDCs. This book debunks both views. It finds that serious imperfections in Zambia's reform of services trade deprived the country of significant benefits and diminished faith in liberalization. What is to be done? Move aggressively and consistently to eliminate barriers to entry and competition. Develop and enforce regulations to deal with market failures. And implement proactive policies to widen the access of firms, farms, and consumers to services of all kinds. These lessons from Zambia are applicable to all LDCs. In all this, international agreements can help. But to succeed, LDCs must commit to open markets and their trading partners must provide assistance for complementary reforms. Zambia, which leads the LDC group at the World Trade Organization, can show the way.

Thank you very much, Gary. Thank you for inviting me today, Julie. I'm going to make four quick points—first of all, that the backlash has a certain sense of historical inevitability but it's fortunately very narrow in scope. Second, that it's not just against trade, which is the conventional wisdom. It's also against misplaced redistribution. Third, that if we are going to aim for more inclusive growth, in the sense that Oonagh spoke about, we need more, not less, globalization. And we also need more, not less, international cooperation, but it will need to take new innovative forms.

Services are the fastest growing sector of the global economy, and trade and foreign direct investment in services have grown faster than in goods over the past decade. Technological progress has greatly enhanced the scope for trade in conventional services, such as education and finance, and also created a host of new tradable services,such as software development and internet access. Moreover, liberalization in many countries is leading for the first time to the private and foreign provision of services such as telecommunications, transport, and finance. The performance of the services sectors can make the difference between rapid and sluggish growth.But the benefits from liberalization are not automatic. Multilateral engagement can be an important catalyst for liberalization. Even though governments can initiate reforms of services individually, multilateral engagement can help in two ways. First, international negotiations, for example under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), could help accelerate domestic reform and improve access to foreign markets for developing countries. However, for these negotiations to be fruitful, all countries must recognize mutual interests in reciprocal liberalization. Developing countries must see advantages of multilateral agreement to increase competition, to enhance credibility of potential domestic reform and to strengthen domestic regulation.In parallel, global cooperation is needed to provide support for developing countries at four levels: in devising sound policy, strengthening the domestic regulatory environment,enhancing their participation in the development of international standards and in ensuring access to essential services in the poorest areas.

The objective of this paper is to assess the adequacy of multilateral rules dealing with monopolies and state enterprises, particularly in the domain of services. This paper argues that since these rules depend largely on the other obligations undertaken by Members, a variety of exemptions and exclusions have weakened the rules considerably. Furthermore, liberalization of services trade, aided by negotiations under the GATS, is leading to changes in market structure and the pattern of ownership. These changes imply that government-mandated monopolies or non-competing oligopolies are disappearing from the infrastructural services for which Article VIII of GATS is most relevant. The behaviour of dominant suppliers that often remain does not fall within the scope of Article VIII and has been addressed by creating other disciplines. The paper assesses how much emphasis needs to be placed on pro-competitive regulation to ensure competitive market conditions and argues that there is a need to strengthen Article VIII and widen its scope to deal with certain generic problems.

This paper analyzes the provisions of the new Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), drawing insights from trade theory and recent developments in the economics of information and law. A central conclusion is that in a world where imperfectly informed procurers purchase from imperfectly competitive firms on behalf of imperfectly informed tax-payers, it is not easy to devise rules which would be optimal in all situations. Nevertheless, the non-discriminatory provisions of the GPA seem to approximate closely the rules which would maximize global welfare. A significant benefit of the GPA is in helping to overcome national agency problems in procurement by creating mechanisms for reciprocal international monitoring supported by multilateral enforcement. There is, however, scope for improvement. First, the GPA does not equip bidders for government contracts to vault over trade restrictions, so the creation of genuine international competition for government procurement remains crucially dependent on the liberalization of trade. Secondly, weaknesses remain in the enforcement mechanism. These include the low level of compensation to a successful challenger, the absence of restrictions on settlements, and the lack of provision for challenge and review of bail-outs. The paper proposes certain improvements.

Beleaguered by mutual recrimination between rich and poor countries, squeezed by the zero-sum arithmetic of a shrinking global carbon budget, and overtaken by shifts in economic and hence bargaining power between these countries, international cooperation on climate change has floundered. Given these three factors—which Arvind Subramanian and Aaditya Mattoo call the "narrative," "adding up," and "new world" problems—the wonder is not the current impasse; it is, rather, the belief that progress might be possible at all. In this book, the authors argue that any chance of progress must address each of these problems in a radically different way. First, the old narrative of recrimination must cede to a narrative based on recognition of common interests. Second, leaders must shift the focus away from emissions cuts to technology generation. Third, the old "cash-for-cuts" approach must be abandoned for one that requires contributions from all countries calibrated in magnitude and form to their current level of development and future prospects.