Trade Liberalisation

The on-site and off-site impacts of land degradation, particularly in the form of soil erosion, pose a serious problem in many developing countries. In Sri Lanka, the implementation of wide-ranging policy reforms and institutional changes designed to move the country toward an outward oriented market economy, have strengthened concerns about environmental degradation and the sustainability of the country's natural resource base. The environmental impact of many of the policy reforms and economic changes are determined by complex economy-wide, inter-sectoral interactions. A computable general equilibrium model incorporating soil erosion is developed to analyse the impacts of various policy reforms in Sri Lanka. Our analysis establishes three important results. First, economic losses from soil erosion in Sri Lanka are substantial. Second, trade liberalisation reforms increase national income and marginally reduce soil erosion. Third, while trade liberalisation has a positive impact on soil erosion, complementary policies which directly target soil erosion, such as tax/subsidy incentives, are needed to minimise social losses from soil erosion.

Methods We used multivariate longitudinal regression to analyse age-standardised mortality rates in working-age men (15-59 years) in post-communist countries of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union from 1989 to 2002. We defined mass privatisation programmes as transferring at least 25% of large state-owned enterprises to the private sector within 2 years with the use of vouchers and give-aways to

This paper posits a formal political economy model where the principle of reciprocity in multilateral trade talks results in the gradual elimination of tariffs. Reciprocity trade talks turn each nation's exporters into anti-protectionists at home; they lower foreign tariffs by convincing their own government to lower home tariffs. Due to the new array of political forces, each government finds it politically optimal to remove tariffs that it previously found politically optimal to impose. The one-off global tariff cut then reshapes the political economy landscape via entry and exit -reducing the size/influence of import-competing sectors and increasing that of exporters. In the next round of trade talks governments therefore find it politically optimal to cut tariffs again. The process may continue until tariffs are eliminated.

Local manufacturing in the Australian Textile, Clothing and Footwear (TCF) industry has declined for more than 40 years. In the 1980’s initiatives were introduced by the Australian Government to address the lack of international competitiveness and “urgent need of restructuring” Australian manufacturing, with a focus on the TCF sector. At this time there was a belief that Australian manufacturing was “over-protected and inefficient” and therefore exposure to international competition would result in cheaper goods for consumers. To compensate for this loss in domestic market share it was thought that Australian firms would adopt “world’s best practice” and begin exporting. Melbourne and Sydney were traditionally the main centres for local TCF manufacturing in Australia, however South Australia had been viable and significant in the past. The general decline has and continues to impact on existing and start-up businesses, industry entrants and graduating students. As an Adelaide based fashion graduate I have chosen to focus this thesis on the current state of South Australia’s TCF manufacturing industry and investigate how it may grow into the future. There is a scarcity of written material concerning the Australian TCF Industry, in particular the South Australian Industry. There is interesting research regarding the New Zealand TCF industry, which can be compared to Australia due to similarities in city population and hemisphere location. The thesis is informed by a range of secondary sources as well as primary research including: work placement, employment, interviews and surveys of TCF business owners and industry professionals and a creative project investigating how to start-up an accessories label currently in South Australia with market research conducted to support.

Presentación de una estrategia para reducir la pobreza y convertir a Honduras en una nación del primer mundo en una o dos generaciones. Análisis de procesos exitosos de liberalización económica en Asia, Europa y América Latina. Elaboración de una estrategia nacional y local de reforma económica para Honduras. Impacto en el PIB de Honduras de las Zonas de Empleo y Desarrollo Económico.

The Philippine duck industry is dominated by smallholder production. At present, about 99 percent of the demand for duck products is met by domestic production. However, it is envisaged that as trade liberalisation continues, the Philippine duck industry will face increasing ...

The link between trade liberalisation and poverty has become one of the most debated topics in recent years. There is a growing body of empirical literature on this topic and many studies provide mixed results. In this study, Sri Lanka is used as a detailed case study and a computable general equilibrium (CGE) approach is used as an analytical framework to examine the trade–poverty nexus. The results suggest that, liberalisation of the manufacturing industries is more pro-poor than that of the agricultural industries. Overall, this study suggests that trade reforms may widen the income gap between the rich and the poor creating uneven gains across different household groups in Sri Lanka. While short-term complementary policies are needed to compensate vulnerable income groups, long-term policies are needed to make gains from trade liberalisation more inclusive and equitable to maintain economic and political stability in Sri Lanka.

Though India embarked on economic liberalisation in 1991, the agrarian sector was liberalised only in 2004 when more than 400 agrarian commodities were exposed to global competition. Food price volatility became a perennial problem after that.

The broad objective of the banking sector reforms in India has been to increase efficiency and
profitability of the banks. The banking sector in India has undergone several changes in the areas of
prudential, regulatory, disclosure, and supervisory norms. It has been passing through the liberalisation
process and deregulation of interest rates regime at the same time, while facing the competition from new
generation private and foreign banks. Commercial banks, especially the dominant public sector banks,
have been facing competition from the banks in the private sector. The present study is an attempt to
examine the financial performance of Indian banks based on the CAMEL variables and to find out
whether the average performance of new private sector and public sector banks differ significantly across
the two bank groups for the period of study, i.e. from 2003-04 to 2007-08. For the purpose of study, five
leading private sector banks – ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank (formerly UTI), Kotak Mahindra
Bank and Indusind Bank and five public sector banks – State Bank of India(SBI), Punjab National Bank
(PNB), Bank of Baroda, Canara bank and Bank of India have been taken as sample. For evaluating the
performance of Indian commercial banks, the world renowned CAMEL Model is adopted. CAMEL
stands for Capital Adequacy, Asset Quality, Management Quality, Earnings Quality and Liquidity. The
study concludes that new private sector and public sector banks do not differ significantly in terms of
capital adequacy and liquidity, however in terms of asset quality, management quality and earning quality
new private sector banks have an edge over public sector banks.
Key Words: CAMEL variables, New Private sector banks, Public sector banks, Liberalisation and
deregulation.

Economic and political policy interventions were reflected on the economic development of the countries with respect to improving economic and social well-being of poor, market productivity and considerable growth rate in GDP. Specifically, in Indian context, these economic decisions have been a considerable influence on inclusive growth of the nation. It is evidence that India embarked on economic reforms in July, 1991, from the effect of a balance of payment crisis. The government initiated economic reforms basically is to provide an environment of sustainable growth and stability. Thereby the LPG (Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization) system has come to the picture for economic progress of the country. The present study investigates the linkage between foreign trade trends of India and its economic development in the light of economic reforms in India since 25 years (1991-2016). The outcomes of the study strongly support that there is a causal relationship between exports to GDP and GDP to exports and also causality between imports to exports in India. I.

On the basis of the application of the Economic geography approach on the economic
integration process of Mercosur, I discuss the advantages and the limits of such a conception, pointing out the absence of certain fundamental variables that are nevertheless worth being considered in the study of the economies of the region. Indeed, the monetary and financial aspects are of dramatic importance in the finance-led accumulation regime that most Latin America countries experience.

This paper examines the impact of trade liberalisation on the trade balance and balance of payments in Mexico. Two events are identified as being important in this regard. The first one is when trade liberalisation started in a serious way in 1985 and Mexico became a member of GATT in 1986. The second event is related to facts involved in Mexico's accession to NAFTA in 1994. Complete trade balance and balance of payments functions, starting from their simple expression, are specified. The models are then extended to include liberalisation indicators, defined as shift dummy variables. The econometric evidence, by applying time-series analysis, shows that the trade reforms launched during the mid-1980s worsened the position of the trade balance by between 14 and 18 percentage points. Regarding the effects of trade liberalisation related to NAFTA on the trade balance, a negative impact is shown during the immediate two years after NAFTA came out. The effects of liberalisation on the balance of payments are not significant. Subsequently, the empirical analysis investigates whether the changing trade performance of Mexico has affected its long run economic growth rate consistent with balance of payments equilibrium. Results indicate that the increase in the income elasticity of demand for imports, which has not been compensated by a higher rate of growth of exports, has contributed to the slowdown of Mexico's long run equilibrium growth rate. The findings have important policy implications for the credit-worthiness of the country, its ability to borrow, and the sustainability of growth.

The issue of the reduction of the levels of tariff and non-tariff barriers below the ones corresponding to the GATT agreement of 1994 has been raised in the circles of international organisations such as the WTO, the World Bank, etc. Programmes of trade liberalisation based on the reduction of trade barriers within Regional Trade Agreements are leading towards the same direction. The expansion of world trade that is expected to take place due to these reductions is considered by the same groups as an important factor contributing to an increase in world production and poverty reduction especially in developing countries.

Empirical studies that have examined the relationship between trade reforms and manufacturing performance have tended to use productivity growth, export growth and changes in price-cost margins as yardsticks of performance measures. We have examined the available literature for the purpose of drawing some conclusions and have obtained mixed results.

The objective of this article is to show how regional programming models can be combined with a global multi-commodity trade module in order to improve policy analysis. After a discussion of model components and the mechanism that link these two models together, the EU WTO proposal is taken as an example to highlight the detailed results that can be generated by such an approach. The results show that a number of EU market prices come under pressure whereas only some EU exports benefit from the multilateral trade liberalisation. Income losses in the agricultural sector of around -9% are observed. Regions with a higher share of livestock or fruits and vegetables production in income generation are relatively more affected. The agricultural income losses are offset by increased welfare of consumers and processors, leaving the EU with a considerable welfare gain.

This study attempts to examine the impact of trade liberalization on Nigeria agricultural performance (model one) with special interest on export sub-sector (model two) using time -series analysis. It is stated clearly that performance of Nigeria agricultural sector and its export sub-sector is a function of trade liberalization. In this work trade liberalization is decompose into macroeconomic variables as thus agricultural degree of openness, agricultural capital formation, agricultural export to import price ratio, real exchange rate and foreign investment on agriculture. The test on hypothesis of model one revealed that two explanatory variables (EP/IP,LOG(FIA)) are statistically significant and three variables (LOG(ADO),LOG(ACF),REXR) are not statistically significant while that of model two revealed that two explanatory variables (ADO,LOG(FIA)) are statistically significant and three variables (ACF, EP/IP,REXR) are not statistically significant having passed the rule of thumb and conventional t-criteria. The F-statistics which test the overall significant of the entire regression model revealed that the overall regression of both models are statistically significant, The Error Correction Model of Ordinary Least Square (OLS) results from the time -series analysis confirm that agricultural degree of openness and agricultural export to import price ratio were significant in the both models; whereas, agricultural capital formation, real exchange rate and foreign investment on agriculture are not significant. The Error Correction Model findings from the MODEL 2 follow the same direction as the MODEL 1. Therefore, it becomes necessary for policy makers to formulate policies that will eventually enhance investment in agricultural capital formation, real exchange rate and foreign investment on agricultural in Nigeria as this will lead to increased output and promote exportation of agricultural products. 15 public enterprises .

Globalization has a major impact on the management of human resources in developing countries including Nigeria. With accelerating globalization, organizations have had to change and new trends have set in even in the industrial relations system and the management of human resources. The fundamental issue addressed in this paper is the extent to which Nigeria has restructured her industrial and trade systems for effective industrialisation within the on-going trade globalisation process. Globalization can therefore be said to have had a phenomenal impact on a developing economy like Kenya that is both positive and negative as explored in the paper.

an agreement during the 2003 Ministerial Cancún meeting. Since then, they have vehemently criticised the farm policies and agricultural tariffs in developed countries. During the year 2004, DCs have extracted some concessions from developed countries, namely the (conditional) ending of European Union (EU) export subsidies, and the promise that significant cuts will take place for highly protective tariffs. They also secured agreement that issues of particular interest for them, like cotton, would be examined.

After a brief reminder of the distinction between regionalism and regionalisation, the chapter describes the landscape of regional economic groupings across the continent before addressing the heuristic value of the notion of integration through hysteresis as well as its articulation with SACU"s new philosophy.

This paper examines the impact of trade liberalisation on the trade balance and balance of payments in Mexico. Two events are identified as being important in this regard. The first one is when trade liberalisation started in a serious way in 1985 and Mexico became a member of GATT in 1986. The second event is related to facts involved in Mexico's accession to NAFTA in 1994. Complete trade balance and balance of payments functions, starting from their simple expression, are specified. The models are then extended to include liberalisation indicators, defined as shift dummy variables. The econometric evidence, by applying time-series analysis, shows that the trade reforms launched during the mid-1980s worsened the position of the trade balance by between 14 and 18 percentage points. Regarding the effects of trade liberalisation related to NAFTA on the trade balance, a negative impact is shown during the immediate two years after NAFTA came out. The effects of liberalisation on t...

When we observe the dynamics regarding the creation of preferential trade agreements and the simultaneous lack of progress in WTO prognosis in recent years, a question appears concerning the future shape of the global trade system: whether the observed proliferation of preferential trade agreements constitutes manifestation of decomposition of the global trade system, a stage in the process of forming a new global trade governance system or a temporary reaction to the WTO crisis as a negotiation forum; this process will decrease its dynamics when the deadlock in Doha negotiations is broken and this round is finished. The objective of this paper is an analysis of cooperation between WTO members within the creation and implementation of discriminatory trade liberalization regimes within PTAs and indicating their impact on non-discriminatory trade liberalization. In the paper, data of the World Trade Organization contained in the Regional Trade Agreements Information System (RTA-IS) base, including trade agreements notified by the WTO.

The core and primary aim of introducing the mandatory procurement component (MPC) is the willingness of the Latvian legislator to raise the local powers of electricity generation and thereby increasing energy-independence from other electricity producers located abroad, especially in the area of renewable energy and combined heat and power energy. Moreover, Latvia does not have oil shale resources as in Estonia, coal resources as in Poland or nuclear power stations as in, for instance, Finland and Lithuania. The aim of MPC is also the promotion of investments in modern energy efficient electricityproducing technologies, which shall also include electricity-producing technologies on renewable energy (co-generation and renewable energy sources).
Nevertheless, current treatment of the PSOs creates legal uncertainty, hampers flexibility of the internal market and market principles in general. The issue in electricity sector is that liberalization has not achieved direct effect on consumers, whereas prices have remained unchanged or have even increased. Therefore, it should be critically assessed, whether entrustment of PSO (including public service compensation), pursuant to Art.106(2), plays its former role in current open market operations and also in case if the market fails. Whether there is much room to impose PSO on electricity undertakings in a liberalized market?

One of the key challenges to the study of Brazilian capitalist development has been how to interpret the survival of ‘backward’ forms of exploitation which, in combination with surplus value generated through higher degrees of worker productivity, often form the basis of the most dynamic economic sectors. This combination of rates of exploitation in single production chains has long been a characteristic of Brazil’s insertion in the global economy. However, in the context of the ‘new consensus’ around export-oriented development, there has certainly been a revival of surplus value extracted by means of super-exploitation (as defined by Ruy Mauro Marini) in (certain) labour-intensive stages of production, as well as forms of unfree labour tantamount to slavery. At issue for the Brazilian labour movement is how to interpret and confront this so-called developmental ‘lag’; or alternatively, how to struggle for working class unity in a scenario which (despite falling unemployment rates, etc.) continues to be shaped by the neoliberal crisis of labour which struck in the 1990s. This paper reflects on the struggle for unity amongst Brazilian workers on the issue of the grounds of Brazilian development in the movement against the FTAA.

The article analyses the issue of economic inequality in the transition economies of Central, East and Southeast Europe. It consists of a literature review and a descriptive analysis as well as an econometric modelling exercise. In the first part we point at the fact that the rise in income inequality was triggered by the magnitude of transitional output loss and

Vietnam has negotiated a series of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements and has made significant steps in integrating into the world economy. This integration is likely to have both positive and negative effects on different stakeholders in the economy. This paper seeks to measure the effects on the welfare of Vietnam's small livestock producers' by linking a household model and the GTAP trade model. A GTAP utility SplitCom is used to separate out pig and poultry prior to several trade liberalisation scenarios being run. A recursive household model with a two-stage LES-AIDS model on consumption side and Cobb-Douglas functions on production side are used. Impacts of likely changes in the prices of inputs and outputs arising from different trade scenarios on behavior and welfare of the farm household are presented.

Recent decades have witnessed a marked acceleration of agro-industrialisation processes in much of the developing world. This is opening up new opportunities for smallholders, even in isolated areas, to escape poverty by trading in the resulting new markets. There is, however, increasing recognition of the constraints faced by poor smallholders in becoming competitive within such markets. There has also been deepening awareness of the knowledge gaps impeding the design of institutional arrangements capable of surmounting these constraints. The concept of 'social capital' has found itself at the centre of efforts to address these knowledge gaps.

Defining the concept of development is not an easy task and it would certainly go far beyond the scope of this text. Nevertheless, it is necessary to recall that originally, the concept of development had a political goal. President Truman presented this concept more than fifty years ago, in 1949. The basic idea was that «developing» Society or an economy was a historical task. Firstly, development from this point of view was mainly a strategy of the Occident to contain communism. Secondly, the process which took a century in the rich countries to occur could happen in the same way in a few decades in other less economically developed countries. The eventuality of «catching up» is closely related to this notion. Third, development is considered to be an endless process that could last forever no matter what happens. Last but not least, development is closely linked with the role of the state and its historical goal to succeed in developing the nation.
Despite the historical and political reasons stated above, our paper focuses on the neo- classical approach to the development issue. According to this analysis, growth has been considered to be the ultimate goal of these so-called Under-Developed countries in order that they develop. The lucid analysis of J. Stiglitz is worth quoting: « During the past four decades, development has been considered (at least for the dominant approach) as a mere matter of economics: The point was to look for the increase in Stock exchange capitalisation (through foreign transfers or the increase in domestic Savings rate) and through a better allocation of resources2. These changes were supposed to lead to a rise in income and, (automatically) to a sustainable increase in the growth rate.» [Stiglitz, 2000a, p.9] The analysis of growth will therefore represent the core element of the neo-classical international trade theory3 and its role is determinant for under-developed countries to «develop» and catch up with the level of developed countries . We will focus on two different approaches to growth (both neo-classical). First, the exogenous growth model developed by Solow [1956 and 1957] which is one of the first to underline the importance of technological progress. Second, the endogenous growth models of Romer [1990] and Grossman and Helpman [1990 and 1991]. The aim is to expose these models and analyse their hypothesis and which are related to our main concern i.e. development of the under-developed countries. The study of these two model families will lead to the debate on convergence or divergence in growth rate per capita between developed and under-developed countries. The endogenous growth theory is, in this respect, worth studying as it implies policy programs concerning the technological progress to avoid divergence and to enable developing countries to increase their growth rate. The conclusion of this part will point out that, in the endogenous growth theory, the process of the incorporation of technological progress which is essential to increase the growth rate, has to rely on the innovation and the R&D progress of the developed countries in order to grow faster (and due to the central hypothesis of increasing returns, imperfect competition and the agglomeration process). Thus, we highlight the dependency of under-developed countries on the developed in terms of innovation and technological progress that is the core element of growth (i.e. development in the neo-classical endogenous growth theory).

The working paper's main objective is to explore the extent to which non-compliance to international labor rights is caused by global competition. From the perspective of institutional economics, compliance with core labor rights is beneficial for sustainable development. Nonetheless, violations of these rights occur on a massive scale. The violators usually blame competitive pressures. A number of studies have come to the conclusion that non-compliance does not provide for a competitive edge, thereby denying any economic rationale for non-compliance. While we sympathize with this conclusion, we find that these studies suffer from faulty assumptions in the design of their regression analyses. The assumption of perfect markets devoid of power relations is particularly unrealistic.

Like many other agricultural commodities, the international rice market is highly distorted because of excessive protective measures in both developed and developing countries. This paper examines the welfare and trade impacts of the global liberalisation of rice and agricultural trade on a number of key players in the world rice market along with the four South Asian countries namely, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Using the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) general equilibrium modelling framework, six different sets of liberalisation scenarios are simulated here, which include: (1) complete liberalisation of rice trade alone in all countries; (2) complete liberalisation of the rice sector in developed countries only; (3) partial liberalisation of the rice trade in all countries; (4) complete liberalisation of the agricultural sector as a whole in all countries; (5) partial liberalisation of all agricultural commodities in all countries; and (6) complete removal of all export subsidies on rice only. Simulation results suggest regional import prices rise in the range 4-15 percent. The global rice trade increases significantly under the complete rice and agricultural trade liberalisation scenarios, with the aggregate global welfare gains reaching $20 billion and $50 billion, respectively. While partial liberalisations lead to some modest increase in world trade and welfare gains, the impact of the complete removal of export subsidies alone, as agreed in the recently held Hong Kong Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is unlikely to have any discernible effects. The results clearly demonstrate the highly unequal nature of the global distribution of welfare gains. While countries like Bangladesh, a net food-importing South Asian LDC, stand to suffer from welfare losses in most cases, such countries as China, India, and Thailand are set to enjoy net welfare gains.