Institutions Trade & Economic Development
We would like to thank The Department of Economics and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, for hosting and sponsoring the 5th InsTED Workshop. We are also grateful for sponsorship and organizational support from the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, as well as sponsorship from the Program for the Advancement of […]
By Reshad N Ahsan (University of Melbourne) and Arpita Chatterjee (University of New South Wales) Economic globalization is currently under threat from a populist political backlash. A common narrative is that this backlash is partly a result of a trade-induced increase in inequality.[1] In our recent research, we show that the same mechanism that causes […]
By Roberto Bonfatti (University of Nottingham) and Kevin Hjortshøj O’Rourke (University of Oxford) World trade has increased tremendously in recent decades, driven by the rise of China and other emerging economies. The reliance of world trade on choke points (such as the Strait of Hormuz, the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea) creates the need for […]
By Beata Javorcik (University of Oxford), Alessia Lo Turco, (Marche Polytechnic University), Daniela Maggioni (University of Catania) Recently, there has been a renewal of interest in industrial policy across the world. Advanced economies promise to use industrial policy to revive their declining manufacturing, while emerging markets hope that industrial policies will help them upgrade their […]
By Kristy Buzard (Syracuse University) Going back to the mid-1980s, the repeated prisoner’s dilemma has been used to model the absence of strong external enforcement mechanisms for trade agreements.[1] Cooperation is enforced by promises of future punishment for any deviation from the agreement, and the amount of cooperation that can be achieved depends on the […]
By Takumi Naito (Vanderbilt University and Waseda University) Trade liberalization encourages more productive firms to start exporting, while it forces more unproductive firms to exit from their domestic markets. The increase in the average productivity because of tougher selection contributes to higher welfare of countries. This idea, captured by the Melitz model of heterogeneous firms, […]
By James Lake (Southern Methodist University) and Santanu Roy (Southern Methodist University) The principle of non-discrimination lies at the heart of the WTO. GATT Article I mandates that, for a given product, a country cannot set different tariffs on different trading partners. Indeed, GATT Article I has provided the bedrock for the various rounds of […]
By Ben Zissimos (University of Exeter Business School) In a landmark paper, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that a key purpose of democratization is to resolve a commitment problem faced by a ruling elite under the threat of revolution.[1] Their motivation focuses on 19th and early 20th Century Europe, during which time a number […]
By Ben Zissimos (University of Exeter Business School) Special and differential treatment (SDT) is effectively a set of exemptions from MFN extended to developing country members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/World Trade Organization (WTO).[1] (MFN (most favored nation) treatment is the principle that any terms agreed between two parties to a […]
Fair Trade is a social initiative that attempts to aid small producers and workers in developing countries, by offering them better terms of trade and helping them to organize, both economically and politically. It works through a certification system overseen by nongovernmental organizations, such as Fairtrade International. A certified product signals to consumers that producers were […]