The Right to Food and the WTO
 Developing countries should be allowed to employ trade measures to ensure food security, declared Oliver de Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food. 
 

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The Transatlantic Challenge: Promoting Free Trade  
As the financial crisis deepens, policymakers are facing growing pressures to close their nation’s borders to the international economy. Catherine Ashton, European Commissioner for Trade, warned that resisting these pressures is imperative, not just for long-term economic health, but for near-term recovery.

The G20 Meetings: No Common Framework, No Consensus
By failing to recognize the global implications of domestic recovery efforts, U.S. policy makers are risking increased trade friction and a longer downturn. The United States should coordinate better with China and the EU to keep trade open while the global economy adjusts to significantly reduced U.S. demand.

Winners and Losers: Impact of the Doha Round on Developing Countries
What would it take to produce a global trade agreement that holds the potential to lift the incomes of developing countries while at the same time offering advantages to developed countries?  This report from the Carnegie Endowment presents a path breaking new model of global trade as a tool to analyze the potential impacts of the negotiations.  The report’s major findings are striking: any of the plausible trade scenarios will produce only modest gains for the world; agricultural trade is not a panacea for most poor countries; the poorest countries may actually lose from any agreement and will need additional measures to offset such losses.

More on Global Trade Policy

Changes in Earnings in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico: Disentangling the Forces Behind Pro-Poor Change in Labor Markets
Past financial crises and periods of slow growth in developing countries show that economic downturns may impact the income of the poor less severely than that of the non-poor. However, given the paucity of their initial incomes, even small reductions in earnings impose a heavy toll on the poor.
 

International Labor Migration in a Globalizing Economy
As globalization spread dramatically over the last twenty years, migration expanded less rapidly than either trade or foreign investment. Yet migration remains contentious, often being blamed for income stagnation, even as some economists praise it as the fastest route to raising world incomes.  In a new Carnegie Paper, Boston University's Professor Robert Lucas explores the more limited and nuanced reality of international labor migration.
 

The World Bank's Approach to Core Labor Standards and Employment Creation
On October 3, 2007, Sandra Polaski testified at a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Financial Services on “The Fight against Global Poverty and Inequality: The World Bank’s Approach to Core Labor Standards and Employment Creation”.  Polaski praised some recent actions by the World Bank and its sister institution, the International Finance Corporation, but expressed concern that different departments of the Bank pursue contradictory stances with regard to core labor standards and employment creation.

More on Globalization and Employment

Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy
The Carnegie Endowment hosted a discussion with Edward Gresser on his new book, Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy, on February 15, 2008. In this book, Gresser argues that American trade policies of the last sixty years have achieved many of the goals envisioned by their liberal founders.  But he also points out that those trade policies bear embarrasing gaps.

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China: World's Largest Economy
China’s economy will surpass the U.S. by 2035 and be twice its size by midcentury. Albert Keidel argues in his new report, China’s Economic Rise—Fact and Fiction, that China’s rapid growth today is driven by domestic demand—not exports—and will sustain high single-digit growth rates well into this century. China’s ascendency as the preeminent world commercial influence requires U.S. leaders to reassess a broad array of economic and military policies.

China's Economic Prospects 2006 - 2020
A new Carnegie Paper studies the impact of China’s accession to the WTO and projects different economic paths for China over the next 15 years using computable general equilibrium models. Projections to 2020 show that the most dramatic difference between a benign global environment and a more conflicted one is felt by China’s poor rural households. WTO accession, while generally beneficial for the Chinese economy, increased the already pronounced disparity between urban and rural households. The paper identifies the challenges Chinese policymakers face as they attempt to improve distribution along with growth.  

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India’s Trade Policy Choices
A major new report by a team led by the Carnegie Endowment reveals both the promise and perils that increased engagement with the global economy holds for India’s farmers, firms, and workers. Continued trade liberalization – including a multilateral deal in the WTO’s Doha Round and possible bilateral agreements with the EU, U.S., or China – could contribute modestly to India’s growth and development. However, if India binds agricultural tariffs at rates which prevent it from offsetting global price shocks, the country could lose more than it gains if prices of key commodities such as rice and wheat continue to swing sharply in the future as they have in the past.

Confronting Pakistan's Social and Economic Challenges
On June 5, 2008, the Carnegie Endowment hosted a discussion of the economic and social challenges facing Pakistan and its prospects for dealing with them. Jan Vandemoortele, former UN Resident Representative in Pakistan for humanitarian issues, presented an array of measures of the challenges and his views on how to address them. Discussants Frederic Grare and Teresita Schaffer commented on Pakistan’s uneven performance in achieving human development goals and suggested what the country – and the international community – could do to improve this record given the current political economic context.

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Gulf Economies Must Diversify to Weather Crisis
Oil-producing Gulf states squandered the opportunity to make much needed economic reforms when high oil revenues would have made the task easier. Ibrahim Saif explains that today's reduced oil revenues and global economic uncertainty make it imperative that they develop competitive, diversified economies.
 

An Employment-Centered Development Strategy for Poverty Reduction in The Gambia
In a new paper, Carnegie Senior Associate Eduardo Zepeda and co-authors James Heintz and Carlos Oya review the growth, employment and poverty record of The Gambia.  They focus on the macroeconomic environment and the structure and functioning of labor markets, and find that the growth pattern of The Gambia does not appear to be pro-poor; improvements in the rate of growth have, at best, halted the spread of poverty.  The authors suggest an alternative policy package to address these problems.

Creating Effective Free Trade
In EU and U.S. Free Trade Agreements in the Middle East and North Africa, Riad al Khouri argues that the West increasingly uses free trade agreements with countries in the region as an economic policy tool with political goals. These agreements have strengthened negative perceptions of “western-led globalization” because they benefit unpopular elites and cause serious short term economic disruptions for workers.

More on Africa and the Middle East

The Promise and Perils of Agricultural Trade Liberalization
The Working Group on Development and the Environment released a new report on impacts of agricultural trade liberalization on sustainable development in Latin America at an event at the Carnegie Endowment on July 24, 2008.

Foreign Investment and Sustainable Development
The authors of a new policy report from the Working Group on Development and the Environment discussed the impacts of foreign investment on sustainable development in Latin America at an event at the Carnegie Endowment on June 19, 2008.

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The Persistent Problem: Inequality and the Challenge of Development
On July 10, 2008, the chair of an American Political Science Association task force discussed the implications for developing countries of global inequality at an event at the Carnegie Endowment.

Worlds Apart: Top World Bank economist Branko Milanovic analyzes income distribution worldwide using, for the first time, household survey data from more than 100 countries. His new book, Worlds Apart, offers a more accurate way of measuring inequality and discusses the relevant policies of first-world countries and NGOs.

More on Global Inequality

Can Trade Policy Support the Next Global Climate Agreement?
Recent WTO rulings indicate an increasing willingness by many states to restrict trade based on the environmental impact of goods production. Yet concern remains that such restrictions will be used to protect domestic industries, reduce efficiency, and spark trade wars. Margaret Lay explains that well designed trade regimes would mute those concerns, and that the global community should incorporate such measures into any post-Kyoto multilateral climate agreement.
 

Trade and the Environment:
U.S.–China Cooperation on Climate Change
International Markets and Climate Change
 

Sovereign Wealth Funds: International Framework Needed
The financial interdependence that sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) created between the West and the Arab world could help stabilize multilateral relations and promote economic development and political stability in the Middle East. In a new Carnegie Paper, Sven Behrendt studies the rise of Arab SWFs, assesses their investment strategy, and evaluates the policies of Arab investors and Western nations.