Brazilian Competitiveness: Folia and Hangover
As the Carnival in Brazil kicked off last weekend, Brazilians were ready for a party. They have reasons to celebrate. Despite a lackluster GDP performance in the last two…
The East Asian Miracle 2.0
"The features of East Asia's experience in transitioning from middle- to high-income status provide important lessons for other countries that are attempting to follow suit."
Revolutionary Services
Last May, in China, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy remarked: “The global economy is being transformed at an unprecedented speed and at the heart of that transformation is the services economy.…
Connecting Wagons: Why and How to Help Lagging Regions Catch Up
If it weren't for the economic performance of China, Brazil and other emerging markets, the global economic slump following the 2008 financial crisis would have been much worse. Not…
Harnessing Trade Opportunities for Growth and Development
Capital Finance International, autumn 2012 The pace of global trade integration over the past two decades has been extraordinary. Trade has been a key driver of global growth, convergence,…
Trade and Climate Change: Handle with Care
Over the past several decades international trade has expanded dramatically. Today, the volume of world trade is nearly 32 times greater than its level in 1950, and the ratio…
In this Jan.10, 2011 photo, shipping containers are loaded on a ship for export at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach, Calif. The U.S. trade deficit widened in December, closing out a year in which America's trade gap ballooned by the largest amount in a decade.(AP Photo/Noaki Schwartz)
Facilitating Trade, Facilitating Development
In 2001, trade representatives from around the world first arrived in Doha, the capital of tiny Qatar, for the latest round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations. The goal…
Connected to Compete? Not as Much as We Could Be
Trade logistics, or the capacity of countries and companies to ship goods to international markets, is a key ingredient for economic competitiveness, growth, and poverty reduction. Poor logistics performance…
The Doha Round: Much More than Market Access
Last week, world leaders gathered in Cannes, France to discuss the future of the global economy. Key on the agenda were issues surrounding the European sovereign debt crisis, new…
On multilateral trade negotiations
Keynote speech at the "2011: VII Symposium: Trade Policy under a New Reality", October 14, 2011 Watch video here
The port at Tema, Ghana, June 16, 2006. (Photo by Jonathan Ernst)
Trade Finance and the Financial Crisis
As the 2008-9 financial crisis spread from its epicenter in the United States to the rest of the world, policy makers found themselves in uncharted waters. The effects of…
Port of Rades
Economic Integration: A Quasi-Common Economy Approach
Europe and Asia provide two different models of integration and growth. The former relied on political willpower to create a unified common market; the latter based its integration on…
Who SEZ One Size Fits All?
From Singapore to Shenzhen, Special Economic Zones—SEZs for short—have helped underpin the rapid export-oriented growth of East Asia. In an effort to replicate these sleepy-fishing-village-turn-thriving-metropolis success stories, many countries…
Asia and South America: A Quasi-Common Economy Approach
The Asian style of regional integration may be seen as a “quasi-common economy” that eschews a formal linkup in political or monetary terms, but manages to generate similar results…
Diversify, Diversify, Diversify
The global economic crisis uncovered many of the vulnerabilities of an increasingly integrated world. So much so, that even though we are now well on the path to recovery,…