Working Papers

Under the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) all parties to the agreement are allowed flexibility in issuing licenses for manufacturing pharmaceutical drugs, in line with their public policy objectives. The licenses may be issued under certain conditions, even if the patent holder (innovator) has an exclusive right to the markets. India made use of this flexibility in March 2012 when it granted its first compulsory license to a domestic company for manufacturing and selling a generic version of an anti-cancer drug.

By applying panel estimation models to Chinese provincial level data for 1993- 2008, this paper examine the impacts of China’s coastal foreign direct investment (FDI) and exports on its inland regions. The results show that coastal FDI has overall positive interregional impacts, while coastal exports do not. Cooperative joint ventures generate positive impacts, but little impact is produced by wholly foreign-funded enterprises. In the case of equity joint ventures, there may even be negative impacts.

This paper looks at the possibilities of a concluding “Bali package” on the issues that are currently engaging the WTO Members. It gives an account of the discussions currently taking place on each of the three areas and makes an assessment whether it is possible for the key countries to arrive at a consensus in time for the Ministers to give their endorsement in Bali.

This paper investigates whether trade facilitation measures benefit the poor and explores the role of microfinance in supporting the utilization of the trade facilitation initiatives. The focus of the study is on the Economic Corridors and Cross Border Transportation Agreement (CBTA), an Asian Development Bank programme to facilitate trade in the Greater Mekong Subregion.

Trade facilitation refers to all measures that can be taken to facilitate cross-border trade flows, but there is no standard formal definition of trade facilitation. This paper examines whether export-oriented MSMEs have access to trade facilitation and how helpful trade facilitation is in supporting exports by MSMEs.

Export Processing Zones (EPZs) have been among the primary factors of export-oriented growth in recent decades. EPZs first came about in 1959 with the establishment of the Shannon Zone in Ireland. Following that, the first few zones were envisaged primarily as industrial zones that were to attract foreign investors to set up facilities to process imported materials and subsequently export their products. With regard to trade facilitation, it is clear that EPZs offer some important advantages.

Trade facilitation has been a key part in the opening up process of China. This paper aims to investigate the linkage between trade facilitation and poverty reduction in China. It discusses the impact of the trade facilitation practises in China and the ChinaASEAN cooperation on trade between China and ASEAN countries. A provincial panel data set for China from 2000 to 2008 is employed to quantify the impact of agricultural imports, agricultural exports and trade facilitation on poverty.

Extensive research has demonstrated the existence of large potential welfare gains from trade facilitation—measures to reduce the overall costs of the international movement of goods. From an equity perspective an important question is how those benefits are distributed across and within nations. After discussing the possible impacts of trade facilitation, we use firm-level data for a wide variety of developing countries to investigate whether it is mostly large firms that benefit from trade facilitation.

Intra-ASEAN trade has increased six-fold since 1993 but greater integration challenge looms in addressing non-tariff measures. The paper discusses the various ASEAN work programs on NTMs and assesses the incidence of Members‘ NTMs on various products. Various ways of accelerating the reduction of non-tariff barriers are discussed, including dispute settlement mechanisms. The paper highlights the importance of a unilateral approach in addressing NTMs and the use of regulatory impact analysis to improve policy making

Relation between trade, inequality and poverty within countries is not beyond controversy. Under free trade and competitive conditions, trade promotes growth, and growth reduces poverty. In general, trade liberalisation has long been seen as an important element of an effective and sound economic policy and trade facilitation is a necessary step for achieving it. Trade facilitation is aimed at ensuring the movement and clearance of goods across borders within the shortest time at the minimum cost. Reducing trade costs can have a profound impact on trade and therefore on poverty.