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Item Open Access How China challenges the liberal trade order: Coercion, contestation and the socialist market economy(Institute for International Trade, 2022) McDonagh, N.Item Metadata only Aid for Trade in Lowering Trade Costs: Overcoming Infrastructure and Institutional Constraints. Indonesia(University Pelita Harapan. Center for International Trade and Investment (CITI), 2015) Lacey, S.; Limenta, M.; Chandra, S.This study takes a hard and somewhat sobering look at the state of Indonesia’s physical (hard) and institutional (soft) infrastructure as the country moves into its second year under the presidential leadership of the recently elected Joko Widodo. The study’s focus is predominantly on how well (or poorly) the country is currently positioned to benefit from the positive and welfare enhancing effects of trade and investment liberalization, something that the country implicitly agreed to embrace when ‐ together with over 120 other economies ‐ it became a founding member of the World Trade Organization in 1995. We first examine some critical infrastructure bottlenecks as they affect roads, electricity generation and ports and conclude that, although the country has made some progress in addressing these, there is still much that needs to be done. The next section of the report focuses on the institutional constraints holding back Indonesia’s integration into the world trading system, particularly the glaring shortcomings that affect the judiciary and law enforcement, as well as the legislative and executive branches of government. Our report then turns to an analysis of the prevailing import and export regimes and finds that these are becoming more rather than less restrictive as various actors at different levels of government seek to establish and assert their permit‐issuing powers in a barely concealed effort to generate rents as well as induce shortages that connected parties can benefit from commercially. Finally our report turns to a brief discussion of the need to implement genuine and effective reform, arguing that this is what the Indonesian people voted for when they elected President Widodo, and discusses how the new president has fared in the face of entrenched elites and well‐organized opposing interests. We conclude that policymakers in Indonesia need to take another long hard look at how they ultimately perceive the national economic interest and how trade and investment liberalization frameworks like the WTO, ASEAN and the still ongoing RCEP negotiations can be harnessed to realize the ambitions of the new president and the electorate who voted for him.Item Metadata only Negotiating strategies for LDCs to make the most of Aid for Trade(United Nations Economic and Social Council for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), 2020) Lacey, S.This paper explores the kinds of demands governments in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) could and should be formulating and submitting in the context of the e-commerce negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as well as any current or proposed Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) they are engaged in with advanced industrialized countries. It begins by discussing the differences between Special and Differential Treatment (S&D) and Aid for Trade (AfT) and affirms that in today’s environment, developing countries and LDCs should never miss an opportunity to engage in trade negotiations with more economically advanced trading partners, since even if limited market access gains are on offer, the prospect of obtaining other concessions in different parts of the AfT agenda could still make for tangible and significant negotiating outcomes for these countries. This paper focuses on negotiating strategies with respect to two kinds of broadly formulated AfT commitments. The first is infrastructure to alleviate supply-side constraints across transport infrastructure, testing and certification capacity and communications network infrastructure for online connectivity. The second set of AfT commitments this paper seeks to provide developing country negotiators advice on is in the area of trade finance, which has become such a prevalent problem for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries that even the WTO Secretariat has started to refer to this as a non-tariff measure. As in all negotiations, the key to success here is preparation. This paper provides some advice on how best to prepare, formulate and substantiate any AfT requests in order to both maximize the chance of success as well as maximize the difficulty for negotiators from developed countries (who must decide on whether to grant an AfT request) to decline any reasonable requests that are tabled.Item Metadata only Enabling growth in the new economy: Industrial policy choices in a world of disruptive technological change(United Nations Economic and Social Commission on Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), 2020) Lacey, S.This paper examines recent technological developments and how they could impact efforts by policymakers and political leaders in developing countries to harness trade and investment liberalization to achieve economic development outcomes. It begins by discussing some of the proven elements to moving up the development ladder but then warns that the tried and trusted methods and pathways could be closing in light of new technological developments such as automation and artificial intelligence, the impact of which on labor markets promises to be disruptive in the short to medium term. The paper provides a set of policy prescriptions that governments could and should be contemplating in order to position their economies to benefit from the opportunities of the new economy but also to shelter their workforces from any possible downsides that these new and disruptive technologies may bring with them. Perhaps the most important finding this report has to offer is that the most decisive factor in achieving genuine change and tangible development improvements is political will and the determination to override the resistance to change that will inevitably come from entrenched interests (including political and economic elites) that benefit from the status quo. This is about improving the state of economic governance in countries and can only be achieved by embarking upon serious and results-driven reform. The report discusses some areas of reform that seem particularly important in light of the technological transformations unfolding, namely skills and education, empowering the private sector and embracing digitization. It was written before the global health pandemic and ensuing economic shocks unleashed by COVID-19, but its findings remain relevant and the urgency for implementing its recommendations has increased as a result of the many sudden and drastic changes the global economy has been forced to undergo as a result of this crisis.Item Metadata only A Handbook on Negotiating Preferential Trade Agreements: Services Liberalization(United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, 2013) Lacey, S.; Sauvé, P.Item Metadata only Life after Doha: reflections in the run up MC9(Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, 2013) Lacey, S.; Fukunaga, Y.; Riady, J.; Sauvé, P.The Doha Round continues to struggle on with its ultimate fate still largely uncertain. This paper, written as part of a broader initiative by the World Trade Institute (WTI), the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) and Universitas Pelita Haparan (UPH) in the run up to the ninth WTO Ministerial Conference on Bali in December 2013, discusses how the multilateral trading system got to the current impasse and offers some preliminary thoughts on decoupling the fate of the WTO from that of what is now a largely moribund round of multilateral trade negotiations. This paper argues that the WTO is still the best organization the world has for tackling a number of increasingly pressing issues, and that despite the quagmire that the Doha Round has become, there still remains a number of important roles for the WTO to assume and to continue playing, not least of which being the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes compliance with international trade rules.Item Open Access Multilateral Disciplines on Preferential Rules of Origin: How Far are We from Squaring the Circle?(Wolters Kluwer, 2012) Lacey, S.A significant quantity of global merchandise trade takes place under one of two sets of preferential rules of origin (ROO), either those of the European Union, the so-called Pan-European Cumulation System (PECS), or those generally preferred by the United States, as manifested in free trade agreements (FTAs) such as NAFTA and the many subsequent FTAs the US has concluded with various trading partners since then. Many years of work conducted by the World Customs Organization and the World Trade Organization have finally culminated in a draft text on non-preferential ROO, with the only thing standing in the way of its adoption being a relatively limited subset of narrowly defined political economy interests in some of the largest trading nations. Some observers have argued that the so-called spaghetti bowl of preferential trade agreements can be 'multilateralized', and that one way to achieve this would be to harmonize preferential ROO at the multilateral level, that is, at the WTO. A significant quantity of global merchandise trade takes place under one of two sets of preferential rules of origin (ROO), either those of the European Union, the so-called Pan-European Cumulation System (PECS), or those generally preferred by the United States, as manifested in free trade agreements (FTAs) such as NAFTA and the many subsequent FTAs the US has concluded with various trading partners since then. Many years of work conducted by the World Customs Organization and the World Trade Organization have finally culminated in a draft text on non-preferential ROO, with the only thing standing in the way of its adoption being a relatively limited subset of narrowly defined political economy interests in some of the largest trading nations. Some observers have argued that the so-called spaghetti bowl of preferential trade agreements can be 'multilateralized', and that one way to achieve this would be to harmonize preferential ROO at the multilateral level, that is, at the WTO. This paper looks at how easy or difficult it would be to achieve such harmonization, both in purely technical terms as well as a political economy matter. It concludes that the current system of ROO is quickly being overtaken by the realities of increasingly unbundled and globally dispersed production processes and that these rules are even more likely to need a complete rethink as global manufacturing in so many industries undergoes what is probably the most profound economic shakeup in over a hundred years.Item Metadata only Australia(Wolters Kluwer, 2013) Lacey, S.; Bienen, D.; Brink, G.; Ciuriak, D.This chapter provides an in-depth discussion of both the history and current practice of antidumping in Australia. It explains how the Australian antidumping authorities interpret and apply both the substantive and procedurual requirements of an antidumping investigation under Australian implementing legislation of the WTO Agreement on Anti-dumping.Item Metadata only The view from the other side of the table: WTO accession from the perspective of members(Cameron May, 2007) Lacey, S.; Streatfeild, J.; Lacey, S.This paper was originally prepared for the Islamic Development Bank’s Seminar on WTO Accession Issues for selected Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) Member Countries, which took place on 28 -29 March 2006, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It offers a detour from the well-trodden ground of WTO accession procedures and the challenges acceding countries face throughout their accession negotiations, and instead focuses on the WTO accession process from the point of view of those on the other side of the table, namely WTO members. WTO accession as an issue has traditionally and indeed still continues to take a back seat to other fields of activity within the WTO, which tend to attract more attention from members as well as grabbing more headlines in the media.1 These more well-known issues include WTO dispute settlement, as well as the ongoing multilateral trade negotiations within the struggling Doha Round. It is perhaps for this reason that the topic of WTO accession tends to attract only a handful of members, who take a consistent and systemic interest in the topic.2 This paper is divided into two sections. Section One discusses the of acceding countries and makes an intellectual distinction between: 1) market access issues; 2) systemic issues, and; 3) non trade-related issues. Section Two of the present paper looks at some of the issues, which come up, in particular, under two different sectors, namely trade in agriculture and trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights. What is interesting is that each Member seems to have its own ‘pet’ issues on which it will invariably take a firm and committed stance. Also interesting is the fact that when two neighbouring countries are negotiating with one another, one as a Member and the other as an applicant, the Member can sometimes be relied upon to make a whole series of bilateral trade issues part of the multilateral accession process, thereby capitalising on its brief negotiating leverage. Finally, there seems to be a consensus that once bilateral deals have been completed with the few major players, accession negotiations tend to become a matter of dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s, although, again, this strategy can also come unravelled in the face of a recalcitrant Member who has chosen to take a tough and committed stance on a particular issue.Item Metadata only New Reflections on International Trade: Essays on Agriculture, WTO Accession and Systemic Issues(Cameron May, 2007) Streatfeild, J.; Lacey, S.Item Metadata only The Long Depression: How it happened, why it happened, and what happens next. By Michael Roberts, Haymarket Books, 2016(School of Social and Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, 2017) McDonagh, N.Book reviewItem Metadata only The TPP and the digital economy: The agreement's potential as a benchmark for future rule-making(Springer Nature, 2017) Lacey, S.; Chaisse, J.; Gao, H.; Lo, C.-F.The way things are quickly changing in the internet economy is important from the standpoint of regulation (and thus government actors and policymakers), since legislative and regulatory frameworks that are too restrictive may tend to inhibit the emergence of new business models or may impede the adoption of innovative products and solutions that have the potential to disrupt established business models and those interests that are behind them. This is in fact the very problem we continue to encounter today and that confront a range of recent innovations, but is particularly visible in the battles being waged over different platforms and services that have emerged in the so-called “sharing economy”. This chapter examines some of the negotiating outcomes achieved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other negotiating fora on rules for the digital economy. This chapter also discusses whether or not the tentative negotiating outcomes achieved in the TPP can be considered the starting point for an emerging international consensus on these rules. Although now very probably defunct as an economic integration project, the TPP still constitutes a helpful starting point given that it nevertheless constitutes an agreed body of rules concluded between a very diverse set of developing and advanced economies with a distinctly divergent set of objectives and approaches when it comes to regulating certain aspects of the internet economy.Item Open Access How to frame a bank bailout: Lessons from Ireland during the Global Financial Crisis(Institute of Sociology, Rzeszów University, 2016) McDonagh, N.This paper presents an analysis of framing strategy deployed in public discourse across two leading daily mass news media in the neoliberal economy of Ireland, during the Global Financial Crisis. Framing is a technique for shaping perceptions of an event by discursively constructing it in a particular way so as to highlight some elements but not others. During Ireland's crisis, as elsewhere, financial institutions were framed as 'too big to fail' as a way to present a political choice as an unavoidable necessity, making opposition to the policy appear irrational. However, a successful framing strategy is one which is most applicable to the local conditions to which it refers, in this case Ireland's political economy. This study finds that Irish Government actors strategically favoured a second frame of financial institutions as being of 'systemic importance'. This frame implies the same policy outcome as 'too big to fail' but without referring to the specific criteria of size. It is found that this strategy is driven by local political economic considerations, namely that many politically-connected financial institutions that received bailouts were small. Framing such institutions as 'too big to fail' would have foregrounded this fact, making opposition more likely. Thus, this study highlights that successful framing strategies must adapt to local socio-spatial conditions of applicability.Item Open Access Jane Kelsey (2015) The FIRE Economy: New Zealand's Reckoning. Wellington, New Zealand. Bridget Williams Books with the New Zealand Law Society(Queensland Uuniversity of Technology, 2017) McDonagh, N.Not applicableItem Open Access The evolution of bank bailouts: two centuries of variation, selection and retention(Springer-Verlag, 2021) McDonagh, N.Why has the policy of state-backed bank bailouts emerged as the de facto global response by governments to crises involving systemic bank risk? This question has salience in the context that while bank bailouts solve an immediate problem of systemic risk, they create another set of problems almost as significant. Bailouts involve largescale socialization of private losses, are politically toxic, ideologically contrary to market norms, and economically costly to the state. For these reasons many commentators view the policy to be neither optimal nor desirable, yet it has nonetheless been institutionalized in all modern financial systems. In this paper I argue that the global diffusion of bank bailout policy over the past two centuries is an example of institutional evolution. A process of variation, selection and retention has winnowed down initial variation in responses to possible financial sector collapse to one policy, a state-backed guarantee to bail out the financial system. Understanding the past is a prerequisite for gaining insight into possible futures. Consequently, historical study of bank bailouts will contribute to understanding the future evolution of systemic banking crises by providing insight into the evolution of institutional resilience.Item Metadata only FDI, financial constraints and productivity: firm-level study in Vietnam(Routledge, 2013) Thangavelu, S.; Findlay, C.; Chongvilaivan, A.; Thangavelu, S.; Chongvilaivan, A.Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been the key engine of growth for developing countries for the past decades. Developing countries have increasingly relied on FDI as a key engine of output, employment and productivity growth. The underlying rationale for attracting FDI in host countries rests with productivity spillovers associated with FDI, whereby positive externalities generated by multinational activities allow indigenous firms to pick up their productivity. Based on the transaction costs theory of FDI (Caves, 1996), multinational enterprises (MNEs) exploit superior knowledge (e.g. technological and informational advantage, managerial expertise and superior organizational structure) transferred from their foreign parents to compensate for the higher operating costs incurred in the host markets. MNEs are therefore expected to demonstrate higher performance in terms of profitability and productivity than domestically owned firms.Item Metadata only Labour market integration with the world: case of Singapore(Center for Economic Integration, Sejong University, 2017) Thangavelu, S.This study analyses the effects of labour market integration on the domestic economy. We explore the effects of skilled and unskilled foreign labour on the sustainability of a small open economy with innovation and growth. Welfare implications such as Gross Domestic Product growth and wage inequality are explicitly modelled in a general equilibrium framework. The model is applied to a small open economy such as Singapore to derive key policy implications to balance economic growth with skilled workers and innovation activities in the economy. The study critically examines the foreign workers’ policy in the Singaporean economy in terms of allowing both skilled and unskilled workers into the domestic labour market. The results of the model indicate that balancing foreign skilled and unskilled labour, with the development of indigenous innovation capabilities, is crucial to maintain strong, sustainable growth in the domestic economy. The results of the model also indicate that a labour market policy that allows more skilled workers tends to increase the supply of labour and reduce the skilled wage gap in the economy.Item Open Access Local government efficiency: determinants and spatial interdependence(Taylor & Francis, 2019) Balaguer-Coll, M.T.; Brun-Martos, M.I.; Marquez-Ramos, L.; Prior, D.We analyse the determinants of local government efficiency taking into account the presence of spatial interactions among neighbouring municipalities. To do so, first we estimate an efficiency index using the robust order-m methodology in Valencian municipalities (Spain). Second, we examine the socio-economic, political and budgetary factors that might influence efficiency levels. Finally, we analyse the spatial interactions present in our data. The results of estimating a spatial autoregressive model show that government efficiency in neighbouring municipalities positively affects the local government’s own efficiency. This highlights the importance of considering spatial dependence structures in studies on efficiency in the public sector.Item Open Access SME Participation in ASEAN and East Asian Integration: The Case of Cambodia(ISEAS Publishing, 2017) Thangavelu, S.; Sothea Oum,; Samean Neak,Covering 201 firms, this study employs a questionnaire survey to explore the impact of trade policy on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Cambodia. The results show that more than half of the surveyed firms were aware of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and larger firms tend to use FTAs more frequently than SMEs. The key reasons for not using FTAs were a lack of knowledge and not knowing how to use the forms. The strong import linkages with ASEAN and East Asia (as compared to export linkages) suggest that Cambodian firms take advantage of sourcing cheaper intermediate inputs from ASEAN and East Asian economies and then export the final products to the U.S. and EU markets through generalized system of preferences (GSP) and Everything But Arms (EBA) arrangements. The surveyed firms hold the perception that the AEC has or would decrease their domestic and export sales as well as their profitability, and face more competition in local and foreign markets. On the other hand, they think the AEC has or would decrease import costs and enhance accessibility to intermediate inputs. The impacts are believed to occur through the reduction of import and export tariffs/ duties, increase in custom procedures, standards and regulations, recognition of professional qualifications, improved investment processes, and better connectivity. The empirical results indicate that compared to non-users, the active FTA users appear to be larger, have higher labour productivity, and have experience with multiple export markets. They are also members of business associations, and have higher skill intensity and technological capability. Firm size, higher labour productivity, access to business networks, active use of information and communications technology (ICT), having more experiences with multiple export markets, skilled human capital and technological capability are important factors for firms to use multiple FTAs and participate in regional integration.Item Metadata only Servicification in global value chains: the case of Asian countries(ERIA, 2017) Thangavelu, S.; Wang, W.; Oum, S.The paper studies the degree of servicification (or the role of services as inputs in manufacturing) of selected 61 Asian countries in terms of global value chain (GVC) activities at the sectoral level using domestic and foreign services from 1995 to 2011. We explore empirically the possible sources of servicification of the economies in terms of the factors driving the expansion of servicification. We categorize servicification activities into two types: (a) domestic servicification using domestic services and (b) foreign servicification using foreign value-added content in domestic exports. Servicification is confirmed in selected Asian countries, particularly in 16 East Asian countries associated with the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiation. However, the selected Asian countries tend to have lower domestic servicification levels, but higher foreign servicification levels as compared to the overall sample of countries in the study. Countries with higher participation rates and lower positions in GVCs tend to have higher levels of foreign servicification across the sectors. In contrast, countries with higher participation rates and higher positions in GVCs tend to use more domestic services in manufacturing exports. The effect is larger for Asian countries as compared to the developed countries in the sample. The study also highlights the role of technical improvement and institutional as key factors in the development of services in the global production value chain.
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