• Tariffs still matter. • Full tariff liberalisation to 2010 would generate dynamic welfare gains of $1 200 billion (at 1995 prices), equivalent to 3 per cent of World GDP in 2010, from greater efficiency and higher productivity. • Developing countries stand to gain relatively more from...

OECD countries face at least five major challenges for promoting policies that are consistent with their development goals: . ensuring security and political stability; . anticipating the impacts of their macroeconomic policies on developing-country growth; . increasing both market access and...

Aid and trade policies – in OECD countries and in developing countries – might reinforce each other to promote development, or they might be substitutes: the sign of the correlation between trade and aid flows depends on the context. East Asia’s rapid growth demonstrates the important...

• Early climate-related actions should be those with a high local economic and/or environmental payoff per unit of impact on greenhouse gases. • Energy, transport and natural resource management policies can often be better designed to realise greenhouse gas reductions at little or no...

During the 1990s, China has experienced a surge in imports of services, particularly those of communication, insurance and other business services, despite the fact that the authorities have maintained a plethora of restrictive measures limiting access to the service sector. Not only does this...

This paper discusses major policy issues related to commodity dependence and export diversification in low-income countries. Contrary to some widely-held view, it argues that natural resources are not necessarily a “curse” — that they do not condemn low-income countries to underdevelopment...

China is emerging as a leading Pacific economy in the 1990s. This paper examines the implications of China's entry into the world market for the OECD countries as well as for the regional economies of Asia and the Pacific. It argues that the shares of Asian countries in the OECD countries'...

Rural areas of the developing world are the last frontier of the information technology revolution. Telephone and internet penetration there remains a small fraction of what it is in the developed world. Limited means of electronic communication with the outside world are just one source of...

The present paper examines the trade development of Pacific-Asian economies during the past decade from the perspective of regional integration. Its main focus is on the development of intra-regional and intra-industry trade. It provides some statistical evidence for the often-heard argument...

Trade-policy reform is an essential feature of China’s economic transition to a market economy. On the one hand, the liberalisation and decentralisation of export activities has boosted exports. On the other hand, the reform of China’s import regime has been progressing much more slowly....