The Institute of Public Affairs, a free market-oriented think tank in Australia, has issued a mini-manifesto on combating climate change. In Undermining Mitigation Technology, Tim Wilson puts forth two arguments about how best to develop and spread new technologies to combat climate change. His big argument is that patent rights ought not to be violated. I think that part of the argument will prove contentious.
More interesting to me is Wilson's argument that trade barriers present a significant obstacle to the diffusion of mitigation technology. This one looks like a no-brainer to me. In his own words:The global market for environmental goods and services is worth between USD$550 billion and USD$613 billion per annum. Of this figure, 35 per cent is in goodsand 65per cent in services....
A new paper available from the National Bureau of Economic Research called Is The Washington Consensus Dead? attempts to resurrect the Washington Consenus, or at least the bit of it that argued for trade liberalization. Authors Anoni Estevadeordal and Alan Taylor let it be known that this was no easy task: "[W]e painstakingly collect new and more detailed tariff data on consumption, capital, and intermediate goods from primary sources, using easy digital sources for recent years, but with recourse to some extremely cumbersome and hitherto unused archival sources for the 1980s." In other words, econometrics is not for the faint of heart. Here is what their hard work has led them to conclude: We think these results show that there is quite strong support for the trade policy prescriptions...
Yesterday in the Guardian, Bjorn Lomborg, the director the Copenhagen Consensus Center, lamented the failure of the latest round of Doha negotiations. Lomborg had this to say: Establishing significantly freer trade would help the world combat almost all of its biggest problems. For an astonishingly low cost, we could improve education and health conditions, make the poorest people richer, and help everybody become better able to tackle the future...Global fear about free trade leaves the planet at risk of missing out on the extraordinary benefits that it offers. Free trade is good not only for big corporations, or for job growth. It is simply good.While I generally agree with the thrust of his argument - free trade is good, both because of the static benefits of comparative...
The Financial Times reports today that US credit card defaults prove a boon to India. According to the article:Firstsource, an Indian business process outsourcing company that handles credit recovery for most of the top five US banks and half of the top 10 credit card issuers, said it was increasing staff numbers to win business from growing credit card defaults in both national markets. "There is more demand for that service. If I could add 100 people today, overnight, I would do it," said Ananda Mukerji, Firstsource chief executive, in an interview with the Financial Times...Mr Mukerji said: "There are more credit card outstandings being defaulted on today than there were a year back, so that's a growth opportunity for us."If I were asked to devise a way to increase protectionist...
Corine Hazoume is the founder of the porcelain and ceramic manufacturer Cera Afrique,
which is described as a "...A laboratory of creation and design which defines new lines of creativity, directs trends..."In an interview with 100% culture(Fr) she stated:
Only work generates wealth. The use of our materials and science can help us to free ourselves from dependency...foster boundless...
Evo Morales has jumped over yet another hurdle this weekend. He has managed to secure a new vote of confidence from among the social movements and grassroots that constitute the loose coalition that is his political platform. This backing is what he needs to further advance his drive to transform Bolivia into a socialist state. But this is also an unfortunate step further into a vicious cycle of ideological polarisation from which, Latin American history says, one can only leave through violence and the absolute rejection of the past....(read more)...
Pendock Uncorked reports on the growing importance of African consumers to SA's wine industry, a testament to the continents growing middle class:
Sheila runs a chain of Spaza shops in Malawi and once a month flies down to Johannesburg for a three day shop. From her base at the Holiday Inn opposite China City at Bruma Lake, she buys “groceries and what-what” from Trade Centre in...
The Doha trade talks failed this week...and Dani Rodrik asks so what? In his view, the probable gains from this further trade liberalization were not significant. I would add that at least in some sectors, formal trade liberalization is becoming increasingly irrelevant. The internet has created the possiblity for ever greater amounts of trade in services that are largely under the radar of the World Trade Organization and, to some extent, government tax collectors.
One example is that of outsourcing of tutors. India now supplies online tutoring help for many of America's struggling high school students. But tutoring may be just the tip of the iceberg. One estimate has it that gold farming - the practice of earning virtual currency in an online game and exchanging it for real currency -...
Walmart has attracted its fair share of attention in debates about globalization and poverty. A new paper from the University of Chicago business school suggests that stores like Walmart have helped dampen the growth of inequality in the U.S. by reducing the prices faced by the poor. Christian Broda, one of the authors, sums it up over at Vox:The expansion of superstores – like Wal-Mart and Target – has also played an important role in accounting for the inflation differentials between rich and poor. Superstores sell the same products as traditional shops at much lower prices. Today the poor do roughly twice as much of their buying of non-durable goods in these stores than the rich. So poor consumers have been the biggest beneficiaries of Wal-Mart coming to town.Of course, I doubt...
Although there were significant efforts made on all sides throughout the negotiations and more progress made than anyone expected, the collapse of the Doha Round yesterday was unsurprising to anyone who tracked the discussions in Geneva over the past several years. What is surprising is that WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy managed to somehow keep the process alive despite increasingly explicit signals from key players that anything short of an agreement that magically delivered both market access for developed economies and market protection for emerging and developing countries would be unacceptable. The true goal has been a compromise that would not yield the large gains that were predicted at the outset but still allow everyone to declare victory and keep the multilateral...
The Doha Round of international trade negotiations collapsed yesterday and prospects for reviving it are dim. A key factor in the collapse was reportedly the insistence by developing countries, led by India and China, that they need maximum flexibility to protect their agricultural sectors for food security reasons and to protect subsistence farmers. In the end, a more fundamental reason seems to have been that India and China are growing rapidly and had little interest in whether the Doha Round succeeded or not. While those countries are big enough and strong enough to take care of themselves in a power-based trading system, the smaller developing countries that they claimed to represent will pay the price of their intransigence.
Other important issues remained to be...
The trade talks have collapsed over the issue of Special Safeguard Measures (or SSMs) in agriculture. This was not even among the hottest negotiating issues. This suggests that the talks could (and probably would) have collapsed over any other (more controversial) issues. The bottom line is that the (real) interest for a far-reaching agreement to liberalise multilateral trade regimes has quickly been vanishing in the face of faltering global economy....(read more)...
Is the first WTO Director-General Peter Sutherland right to call the collapse of the trade talks a 'disaster'? It would certainly have been better for world trade, world income, and most people in developing countries if the Doha negotiations had succeeded in producing a significant liberalisation in trade rules. But it has been clear for at least five years that a 'big' agreement was not possible, so the claims that several hundred billion dollars worth of potential world trade gains have been lost this week are not realistic. ...(read more)...
It's official - the Doha round of trade talks has ended without producing any agreement. The FT provides the details. While it's a shame for world trade, I'd like to highlight one small item that might be salvaged. During the negotiations, the U.S. and the European Union 'offered' to increase the number of temporary work visas available for skilled professionals. This is something that these countries ought to be unilaterally, regardless of the failure of Doha.
It goes almost without saying that the U.S. and the European Union would benefit from the skilled labor, while the immigrants would earn higher wages and gain new skills. But such a policy is particularly important for the U.S. While American universities have benefitted from the talent of the smartest people on earth for the...
From 1997 to 2004, this particular country’s economy grew an average 6.8 percent, and it has accelerated since then, while its real GDP per capita has almost tripled since 1990, now estimated at $2,300 - two figures that, if you’ve studied growth economics, indicate it is still in transition and far below the global speed limit based on technological change. You might care more about the fact that 15 percent of this country’s population lived below the World Bank’s dollar-a-day line in 1993, and by 2002 it was only two percent. You might also care about how this growth was achieved while maintaining a GINI coefficent of .37 - far more equitable than America’s .45, China’s .47, or Brazil’s .57. Or do you care about infant mortality - which was...
Founded by the award winning Felicia Twumasi, Homefoods processes,packages produces all-natural red palm oil, high-quality African spices, cassava flour, shito hot sauce and traditional fruit jams.
via Specialty...
The U.S. Congress launched a new bipartisan Caucus for Congressional-World Bank Dialogue at a packed event on Capitol Hill July 16. The caucus, co-chaired by Kevin Brady (R-TX) and Betty McCollum (D-MN), provides a forum for members of Congress to engage the World Bank, parliamentarians and policy experts on poverty reduction, global development and trade.
As many Hill and Bank-watchers know, World Bank rules prevent its president and senior staff from testifying before Congress and restrict discussions to closed-door meetings. While some argue this protects the bank from type of congressional meddling that has hobbled USAID, it also means that the bank misses opportunities to educate and inform Congress about its work through public, congressional testimony. Reuters' reporter...
Image via WikipediaSuneor a peanut oil producer handles about 90% of peanut seeds placed on the Senegalese market, equivalent to between 130,000 and 250,000 tons annually.The company is organized around 5 industrial sites with a total crushing capacity of 900,000 tons of peanuts per year. The company exports 50,000 tonnes of crude peanut oil to refineries in Europe, Asia and North...
Trade ministers are currently gathered at the World Trade Organization in Geneva to give one last push to delivering a Doha Round trade agreement before it is put on the shelf indefinitely. As it has been from the beginning, agriculture remains a key stumbling block (see my book, Delivering on Doha). US Trade Representative Susan Schwab started the week by offering to lower the overall ceiling for trade-distorting US farm subsidies from $22 billion to $15 billion. But the offer has been derided as meaningless by Indian, Brazilian, and other developing country negotiators because US subsidy payments are currently well below that ceiling as a result of the recent surge in commodity prices. (USDA projects payments in two of the three trade-distorting categories (excluding de...
From their website:
The Real IPM company (a development marketplace finalist) mass produces beneficial insects and biopesticides for use in Integrated Pest Management programmes in Kenya and beyond, providing growers with good quality, affordable biological controls...If pesticides are not used to protect crops, the grower needs to use other methods, which could be naturally occurring biological...
From the PSD Blog:
Business Partners specializes in providing small businesses with risk capital,and at reaching large numbers of small companies. Over the past few years BPI has provided thousands of SMEs with equity, quasi-equity and - crucially - hands-on advice.
One of the key products which BPI offers is the so-called "royalty loans" whereby the entrepreneur is provided with a low interest...
Just recently, the EU approved the extract of the baobab fruit as an ingredient in foods in Europe. If you're like me, until today you had never heard of the boabab fruit (pictured right). According to the proprietor of the African Kitchen Gallery Restaurant in central London, "It is very nutritious, full of vitamin C and vitamin A. It has a very special flavour, but the closest I can get to it is jackfruit, which is like melon." That doesn't sound too bad to me.
Over at the Cheetah Index, blogger Chido Makunike has a mixed reaction to the EU's approval (Hat tip: Global Voices Online): There are many things about this developing export niche that will only become clear with time. I don’t think anyone yet knows what the potential size of this new export niche will be...
The Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations is once again at a crucial juncture. But will it deliver for developing countries? As discussed in a new ODI paper, developing countries have varying interests in a final settlement at next week’s ministerial talks....(read more)...
From the Joe's Oyster website:
JOC specialises in the farming of Crassostrea Gigas oysters,also known as the Namibian Pacific oyster. Crassostrea Gigas is a filter feeder which reaches havest size within 9 months of farming rather than the 24 months it takes similar species. This oyster is popular around the world and JOC offers these delicacies in a variety of market...
“A leading World Bank economist's claims that biofuels are a major cause of soaring world food prices could further undermine support for the alternative fuel worldwide and cause tensions with the White House, which fervently supports the new industry.
The draft report by the World Bank's top agricultural economist, Don Mitchell, estimates that the growing use of food for fuel, combined with low grain stocks, market speculation and export food bans, contributed as much as 75 percent of the 140 percent rise in prices between January 2002 and February 2008.” (Reuters, July 9, 2008)
The draft report by Don Mitchell is yet another volley in the debate over the role biofuels are playing in the food price crisis. The stakes are high because, if his estimates are accepted...
The extraordinary growth in trade seen prior to the First World War and after the Second World War has often been attributed to a decline in the cost of transport. However, a new paper available from the National Bureau of Economic Research called Global Trade and the Maritime Transport Revolution suggests that the decline in the cost of transport had little influence on the growth of trade prior to the First World War:[W]e find little systematic evidence suggesting that the maritime transport revolution was a primary driver of the late nineteenth century global trade boom. Rather, the most powerful forces driving the boom were those of income growth and convergence. Finally, we suggest that a significant portion of the observed decline in maritime transport costs may have been induced by...
Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright and John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Clinton and CEO of the Center for American Progress, have urged rich world leaders assembled for the G8 summit in Japan to take action on the global food crisis, including rapid release of Japanese rice stockpiles imported mostly from the US. In an Op-Ed in today's Boston Globe they write:The food crisis must be a top priority at this week's G8 summit. Agriculture continues to experience more trade distortions than any sector in the global economy. For its part, the developed world -- particularly the United States, the European Union and Japan -- must confront the global impact of our subsidies and tariffs on agricultural products. Barriers to trade between developing countries...
From the The Africa Growth Institute website:
It is now very clear that the development of Africa depends on the growth of the SMME sector. This sector provides more than 95% of Africa’s workforce...The 2008 Africa SMME Awards aims to recognise the success and vitality of the Africa SMME sector. This unique annual awards program has been established specifically to acknowledge, encourage and...
A report in the Financial Times by John Thornhill leads with a remarkable quote from French President Nicolas Sarkozy warning the EU that he would block a proposed World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement on agriculture that would reduce European production incentives:
In a world where there are 800m poor people who cannot satisfy their hunger and where a kid dies every 30 seconds from hunger, I will never accept a reduction in agricultural production on the altar of global liberalism.President Sarkozy is happy to have French farmers feed poor, hungry people in developing countries, but not happy to have those people improve their livelihoods by competing with French farmers on a level playing field. According to the OECD, between a quarter and a third of European Union...
BetumiBlog reports on Culinary Entrepreneurship in Ghana:
What delights me and my senses is some of the emerging “made in Ghana” foods featuring Ghanaian products. A sampling is included here. There's Takai, a liqueur “made from natural cocoa and coffee blended with other natural aromas” produced and bottled in Ghana by Gihoc Distilleries. The name “Takai” comes from a traditional dance and...