This report, prepared by a team of young Cambodian researchers assembled under the Trade-Related Assistance for Development and Equity (TRADE) project,1 examines the possible environmental impact to result from intensified production and international trade in rice, cassava, and fish.

Trade, economic development, and climate change issues are closely linked and this has significant implications for the design of climate change policies especially for developing countries. Developing countries regard the objective of economic development and growth as being as important as the objective of climate change mitigation, and therefore prefer to use emission intensity reductions as targets for their climate change policies.

Theoretical and empirical works related to international trade are confined to models which have labour and capital as explicit factors of production. Although income inequality and trade openness have been given importance in the literature, the role of quantity and quality infrastructure has barely been investigated in this context. Similarly, growth regressions have highlighted the role of infrastructure and trade openness in economic growth, while inclusive growth has not received much attention.

This paper provides a snapshot of current protectionist dynamics making extensive use of the GTA database. Two methods of estimating the trade covered by crisis-era protectionism are also examined. Although the method used in recent WTO report may use a more appropriate level of tariff line disaggregation for some discriminatory measures, overall, it is argued that GTA's estimates provide a better estimate of the amount of global commerce affected by global era protectionism. This paper also confirms the contemporary importance of “murky” protectionism.

This study empirically investigates how the quality of trade facilitation (both on-theborder and behind-the-border factors) in landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) and in their transit countries impacts LLDC trade. It uses an augmented gravity model incorporating trade facilitation variables. Two sets of gravity models are estimated, one to explain LLDC exports and the other to explain LLDC imports. The main contribution of this study is the consideration of trade facilitation environment in both LLDCs and transit countries.

East Asia is an interesting group of countries to study the impacts of trade facilitation. The majority of the economies in the region have shared similarities in terms of the apparent pursuit of export-lead growth policies. These similarities would partially reduce the impacts of unobservable factors such as economy specific policies, endowments and result in a more precise picture of trade facilitation effects on trade. A number of papers have explored the effects of various trade facilitation factors, both at-the-border and behind-the-border, on trade flows among East Asian economies.

Trade and climate change are clearly among the most important economic and political issues facing the global community. Although it is generally agreed that the two areas are closely related, the nature and outcome of these linkages are still debatable. On the one hand, there is a view that trade can contribute negatively to the problem of climate change because of its impacts on the level of economic activities and the impact on international transport.

The global economy has witnessed significant reduction in traditional trade barriers (e.g., tariffs and quotas) in the past years. This trend has been mainly a result of unilateral, regional, and multilateral trade liberalization reforms. However, technical barriers to trade and other types of trade barriers still exist and have proliferated, hampering the free flow of goods and services as well as investments across borders. Some examples of trade bottlenecks include trade processes and procedures, trade-related infrastructures, regulations, and institutions.

This study examines the adequacy and effectiveness of delivery of logistic services and their implication for export performance of Nepal. It provides a detailed assessment of the current trade facilitation and logistics situation in Nepal, including on transportation, storage and handling services. The results of an exploratory survey of freight forwarders and exporters conducted as part of the study indicate low level of efficiency of logistics in Nepal.

It is almost taken as a matter of definition that IT is an integral part of trade facilitation (TF) which objective is to expedite the movement, clearance, and release of goods, including goods in transit. Yet for many developing and least developed countries, especially those from Asia, IT remains a distant but desirable goal. There are many and varied reasons behind this, and it is not the purpose of this chapter to lay them out. However there appears to be some confusion regarding IT in TF.