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191. WTO 2025: Enhancing global trade intelligence

Author:
Alan Wm. Wolff
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
International trade flows based on information. Is the foreign market open? What are the conditions for entry? Are there customs duties to be paid and other regulations that need to be satisfied? Businesses thrive on getting as much certainty as they can find, and this requires reliable information. Is the competition subsidized? Are the competitors favored state-owned companies? During the pandemic, governments needed to know if food and medical supplies were going to be available from foreign sources and, most importantly, how available vaccines would be as most of the world’s countries could not produce any. Effective public policy cannot be made in the dark. The World Trade Organization, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade before it, were founded with the idea of providing transparency. But more is needed to understand why trade is taking place, and even more important, when it is not, why not?
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Trade, and WTO
Political Geography:
Global Focus

192. WTO 2025: Getting back to the negotiating table

Author:
Alan Wm. Wolff
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
The negotiation of multilateral agreements has stalled at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The action is among groups of like-minded WTO Members, either regionally or in open plurilateral agreements (OPAs) in Geneva at the WTO. There is currently no consensus among WTO Members to include plurilateral agreements officially in the set of WTO agreements. Many additional challenges require multilateral—that is, global—agreements: the pandemic, food security, and climate change, among them. A breakthrough is needed to get WTO negotiations back on track.
Topic:
Climate Change, Treaties and Agreements, Food Security, Multilateralism, COVID-19, and WTO
Political Geography:
Global Focus

193. WTO 2025: Constructing an executive branch

Author:
Alan Wm. Wolff
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
The World Trade Organization (WTO) as an institution accords much less of a role to its chief officer and her staff, namely the WTO Director-General and the Secretariat, than do any of its sister international organizations—the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development—to their chief officers and staff. The WTO Secretariat is much smaller than its peer international organizations and underfunded. In considering WTO reform, this deficiency needs to be rectified if the WTO’s performance is to live up to its Members’ needs.
Topic:
Economics, World Bank, IMF, WTO, and OECD
Political Geography:
Global Focus

194. South Korea's Public Diplomacy during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Seeking Status as an Authority in Global Governance

Author:
Kadir Ayhan
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic caught almost all countries unprepared. Some countries, including South Korea (hereafter Korea), managed to deal with the pandemic relatively more successfully than others and had a proactive global posture from early on, including providing aid, and public diplomacy campaigns. In this paper, I explore Korea’s COVID-19-related public diplomacy activities and its aims. I analyze Korea’s COVID-19 humanitarian aid trends, its policy documents, and the tweets related to the pandemic posted by the country’s official public diplomacy account. I find that the pandemic catalyzed what Korea had already been aiming to do, which is improve its global status to be among top authorities across various issue-areas. Due to the nature of the pandemic, Korea’s public diplomacy has been themed around international cooperation and solidarity. I suggest that Korea should hold onto its international cooperation emphasis on public diplomacy, to form the basis for its status-seeking as an authority in global governance in the post-pandemic era.
Topic:
International Relations, Diplomacy, Domestic Policy, COVID-19, and Health Crisis
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, and Global Focus

195. On data and trends in horizontal inequality

Author:
Carla Canelas
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Economic, social, and political inequalities are at the forefront of today’s public debate. While governments around the world have made conscious efforts to promote social inclusion, and major progress in fulfilling basic needs has been witnessed during the last decades, certain groups of people are still left behind in many domains of life. This paper aims to summarize recent horizontal inequality trends across and within countries and to better understand these changes over time. Overall, horizontal inequalities have been falling in the developing world, in spite of significant country variation. Importantly, significant differences exist for different inequality dimensions, i.e. economic, social, political. In terms of data, few cross-country horizontal inequality datasets are available for research. In general, there is a trade-off between the coverage of countries and time periods as well as comparability of the results between countries and years. Contrary to vertical inequalities, there has not been a systematic effort to construct and maintain an up-to-date dataset on horizontal inequalities.
Topic:
Inequality, Ethnicity, and Data
Political Geography:
Global Focus

196. Poverty, inequality, and growth: trends, policies, and controversies

Author:
Ines A. Ferreira, Vincenzo Salvucci, and Finn Tarp
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Reducing poverty and inequality and promoting inclusive growth are fundamental to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Much has changed in the global economy in recent decades and perspectives on progress made vary widely. This is even more so in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. However, getting to grips in a meaningful manner with existing trends is critical to evidence-based policy-making. This contribution aims to provide an original review and evaluation of the main stylized facts concerning poverty, inequality, and growth. It will uncover existing trends, put controversies into perspective, and help to provide a platform for informed policy debate.
Topic:
Poverty, Inequality, Sustainable Development Goals, and Economic Growth
Political Geography:
Global Focus

197. Wartime governance and state-building trajectories in post-conflict societies

Author:
Patricia Justino
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
To date, there is limited understanding about the consequences of wartime dynamics for post-war state-building processes. This paper explores one such dynamics—the forms of governance exercised by armed groups during wartime—and proposes a theoretical framework outlining how forms of wartime governance affect trajectories of state-building in the aftermath of civil wars. Six possible trajectories are mapped out: stable democracy, weak democracy, stable autocracy, fragmented rule, contested autocracy, and durable disorder. Each trajectory is shaped by the interaction between two dimensions of wartime governance: how armed groups build institutional capacity in wartime and the characteristics of wartime civilian rule by armed groups. The core argument is that civil wars generate within themselves bureaucratic and institutional capacity—through how armed groups govern territories and civilians within them—that under certain circumstances may be harnessed in the post-war period to build states capable of governing. The characteristics and durability of those forms of wartime governance shape the type of statebuilding and political regime trajectories that emerge in the post-war period.
Topic:
Political Violence, Development, War, Conflict, Peace, and State Building
Political Geography:
Global Focus

198. Aid’s impact on democracy

Author:
Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, Ana Horigoshi, and Rachel M. Gisselquist
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper investigates the impact of foreign aid on democratic outcomes using a panel of countries for the period between 1995 and 2018. In so doing, it speaks to a major critique of foreign aid, which is that it negatively impacts democratic governance. The analysis distinguishes between developmental aid and democracy aid, and examines democracy aid to specific sectors, in order to explore variation across different aid types. It draws on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Creditor Reporting System (CRS) data on foreign aid and indices of democracy from the Varieties of Democracy project, employing a combination of a maximum likelihood estimation and structural equation modelling (ML-SEM) model and fixed effects models. Overall, using a more extensive set of data and methods than previous analyses, we offer comprehensive evidence pointing to aid having a positive if modest impact on democratic outcomes. Our analysis suggests this effect is more significant for democracy aid than developmental aid, but there is no evidence of negative impact for either. These results are robust to multiple specifications.
Topic:
Development, Foreign Aid, and Democracy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

199. Global oil theft: impact and policy responses

Author:
Etienne Romsom
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper, the first of two on global oil theft and fraud, discusses the prevalence, methods, and consequences of global oil theft, valued at US$133 billion per year and equivalent to 5–7 per cent of the global market for crude oil and petroleum fuels. However, the impact of oil theft is significantly larger than the value of theft itself. Government tax yields have been assessed for 30 developing countries associated with oil theft and found to be significantly lower than in the International Monetary Fund’s benchmark study. Oil theft, smuggling, and illicit trade in petroleum products are often seen as lesser forms of crime than human trafficking, the drugs trade, smuggling of weapons, kidnapping, and terrorism. However, oil theft as an act of opportunity tends to evolve into organized crime and, if left unchecked, oil theft may interlink with other organized crime activities and groups. Actions against oil theft should target the transnational crime syndicates that continue to find ways to replicate their thefts by adapting their theft strategies and business models. However, there is a lack of basic data, including how much oil is stolen, how the stolen oil is transported, and how illicit oil transactions are conducted. The mixing of legal commercial operations with illegal oil theft activities and fraud obscures many oil theft crimes.
Topic:
Corruption, Oil, International Crime, and Tax Evasion
Political Geography:
Global Focus

200. The legacies of armed conflict: insights from stayees and returning forced migrants

Author:
Isabel Ruiz and Carlos Vargas-Silva
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
How does conflict, displacement, and return shape trust, reconciliation, and community engagement? And what is the relative impact of exposure to violence on these indicators? In this paper we explore these questions by focusing on the legacies of armed conflict and the differences between those who stayed in their communities of origin during the conflict (stayees) and those who were displaced internally and internationally and who returned home over time (returnees). The results, which rely on analysis of data we collected in Burundi, suggest that internal returnees have significantly lower levels of trust, reconciliation, and community engagement than stayees, whereas the differences between international returnees and stayees are mostly statistically insignificant. Greater exposure to violence has a more positive effect on trust for returnees compared to stayees. On the other hand greater exposure to violence has a more negative effect on reconciliation and community engagement for returnees compared to stayees.
Topic:
Displacement, Conflict, Reconciliation, Trust, and Migrants
Political Geography:
Global Focus