Country insights vary according to analyses of their inclusive growth (IG) experiences. Looking at the trends in stylized facts of Nepal, a land-locked, least developing country in South Asia, is at first glance paradoxical. That is, Nepal experienced a costly domestic insurgency situation from the early 1990s. This, however, was accompanied by a sharply decreasing trend in poverty headcount rate from 41.8% in 1996 to 30.9% in 2004 and 25.2% in 2011.

This paper examines the productivity of firms and their ability to enter the export market, i.e., the self-selection hypothesis and the determinants of labour productivity at the firm level for India’s major exporting manufacturing industries during 1991-2009. The paper also examines whether export intensity at the firm level differs between domestic-controlled and foreign-controlled firms, and between private and public firms. Applying a 2SLS model, the authors find evidence in favour of the self-selection hypothesis.

The improvement of international trade in recent years has been influenced by the reduction of trade costs. The attention of international trade is to minimize trade costs through tariffs, trade facilitation and trade logistics, both inbound and outbound. As one of the emerging economies in international trade, Thailand’s economy depends much on trade and therefore the Government has been attempting to eliminate all trade barriers. Since Thailand’s manufacturing trade amounts to some 90% of total trade, trade costs must play a significant role in such trade.

Due to multilateral trade liberalization and a large number of bilateral and plurilateral preferential trade agreements, border barriers to trade, especially tariffs, have decreased tremendously. As a result, trade facilitation plays an increasingly important role in removing behind-the-border trade barriers which have become a major trade obstacle. Realizing this, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) program created two important initiatives for the improvement of transportation and trade facilitation.

Economic growth across the globe increasingly depends on knowledge-based industries. As a consequence Intellectual Property Rights, or IPRs, are becoming increasingly integral to trade agreements. With the stagnation of the Doha Round the prospect of new global standards, to augment those already agreed through TRIPS (the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights administered by WTO) is diminishing.

The paper examines the labour migration trends in ASEAN and in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), in particular, and analyses the ASEAN regional labour-related initiatives that seek to improve the protection of migrant workers. It discusses social protection and the access status of GMS migrant workers, as well as the legislative and legal barriers in accessing social security in host countries. Existing national social security schemes in ASEAN countries and how losses from lack of portability can be addressed, especially through social security agreements, are also discussed.

The authors use newly collected data on trade and production in 178 countries to infer estimates of trade costs in agriculture and manufactured goods for the 1995-2010 periods. The data show that trade costs are strongly declining in per capita income. Moreover, the rate of change of trade costs is largely unfavorable to the developing world: trade costs are falling noticeably faster in developed countries than in developing ones, which serves to increase the relative isolation of the latter.

cessfully navigate this difficult period. This research paper is a preliminary attempt to inquire, through a small sample survey, the response and adaptation of the Vietnamese woman-led, mostly export-oriented, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to the new challenges arising from the economic crisis, and especially the ways these enterprises have sustained their export orientation. (However, it is not a comparative study with their male counterpart SMEs).

This paper develops a simple small-country model to explain why the World Trade Organization (WTO) prohibits export subsidies but allows import tariffs. Governments choose protection rates (import tariffs/export subsidies) to maximize a weighted sum of social welfare and lobbying contributions. While transportation costs decrease due to the progress of trade liberalization and lower transportation costs, import-competing sectors decline but export industries grow. In the growing export industries, the surplus generated by protection is eroded by new entrants.

The paper reviews critically the arguments concerning greater voice for developing countries in global governance. It supports the arguments for greater voice but argues that greater voice brings with it greater responsibilities in terms of the actions and commitments from developing countries. The two main illustrations are the multilateral trade negotiations in the WTO and the negotiations concerning climate change in the UN. In both case, it is argued, developing countries must assume greater responsibilities if these negotiations are to be concluded.