The ARTNeT Expert Group on Trade and SDGs is expected to play a bridging role between research communities that are currently operating (often) separately on themes of international trade and SDGs. The expert group will use the traditional channels of work of ARTNeT, including the establishment of an advisory board, organization of research capacity building workshops and regular knowledge dissemination and multi-stakeholder consultation.

ARTNeT researchers and partners are welcome to contribute relevant resources to this initiative by contacting the ARTNeT secretariat at artnetontrade@un.org. More information on the activities of the expert group will be provided here.

This paper offers a review, analysis and assessment of the status of services liberalization in North and Central Asia.

Following a brief introduction about the region and its economic context, this study provides an overview of the binding commitments undertaken by transition economies under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and an evaluation of how they compare to domestic policy reform, with a focus on the three transition economies that most recently acceded to the WTO: Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Tajikistan. It proceeds to explore the scope of interest in services liberalization in North and Central Asia, highlighting the reasons behind the relative little attention so far received by the services sector in the region. This is followed by an assessment of the role that foreign direct investments can play in improving the treatment of foreign services suppliers and modernize services, and an illustration of how to prioritize services sectors for higher value-added participation in global value chains.

The paper concludes by offering a number of policy recommendations to support services liberalization with a view to diversity the economy, speed up the transition process and improve the overall standing of North and Central Asian countries in the world economy.

This paper examines the reasons for farmer suicides in India. Inability to get the right price, crop failures, and insurmountable debt are the factors that may drive the farmers to take this extreme step. A key factor for farmers being unable to get market prices is inefficient agriculture supply chain management. We find that the reasons for inefficient supply chain management include lack of reforms in the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) Act, low bargaining power due to small farm size, and lack of warehousing facilities. Crop failures happen because of poor irrigation facilities. Considering agricultural output and rainfall data from four different states in India we find evidence in favor of association between the cyclical component of agricultural output and rainfall data. Understanding this linkage is important from the perspective of formulating demand management policies (read, intervention by the government and central bank).

The present study works out the relative benefits/losses of India aligning with RCEP and BRICS member countries under the conjecture of free trade area in good trade only. The study uses partial (SMART model) and general equilibrium (GTAP model) tools for this assessment. The main focus in the study is to compare the benefits/losses to Indian economy associated with both policy scenarios. The results reveal that it would be beneficial for India to align with other RCEP member countries under the policy of free trade area in goods trade. If India wants to join BRICS FTA in the near future then it must negotiate for the entry of its own specialized products into their markets and in reciprocity, it should allow the entry of their specialized products in to the domestic market. The results are in favor to make free trade area between RCEP countries which is more beneficial for India in comparison to make BRICS FTA.

The ARTNeT and Trade, Investment and Innovation Division, ESCAP, will hold a seminar on “The impact of Chinese import competition on innovation (patenting and R&D) in Japan”, at UNCC, Bangkok, on 7 October 2016, from 10.30-12.00 hrs.

The speaker is Mr. Nobu Yamashita, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Australia. The research presentation examines the innovation responses of a panel of Japanese firms to Chinese import competition for the period 1994-2009. The study is based  on a comprehensive dataset matching firm-level information to the patent applications stored in the Institute of Intellectual Property Database. Carefully accounting for a simultaneity bias between innovation and importing, authors identify several result.  First, the impacts of Chinese import competition on innovation depends on the type of firms which differ their engagement to trade. Second, firms which have responded to the China competition have increased their innovation inputs (R&D expenditures), but not necessarily patenting more. Third, the China effects have adversely altered the quality dimension of patented inventions. Taken together, this paper presents evidence that Chinese import competition have induced Japanese firms re-allocating within-firm resources towards more the innovation capacity but not necessarily have led them to produce high quality patents.

Please confirm your participation by email to ARTNeT Secretariat at artnetontrade@un.org no later than 5 October 2016.

The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), one of ARTNeT members, will host the Ninth South Asia Economic Summit (SAES-IX) in Dhaka on 15-16 October 2016. The overarching theme of SAES-IX is “Reimagining South Asia in 2030”. Deliberations at SAES-IX would focus on envisioning a South Asia which by 2030 will be an upper middle income region with high GDP growth rate, a strong middle class, zero hard core poverty and hunger, sustainable cities, structurally transformed economies with strong manufacturing sector.

Co-organisers of the event - also ARTNeT members - are Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), India; South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics and Environment (SAWTEE), Nepal; Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Pakistan and Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka (IPS).

The registration process will remain open till 6 October 2016. Please find the programme, speakers and the registration details here. 

 

The conference, organised by our member, Centre of Global Environmental Policy (CGEP), Beijing Normal University and WWF​, aims to bring together speakers and participants from governments, the private sector, civil society, academia, etc., and will feature active dialogues among participates to address various issues of promoting Green Trade in Asia and globally. The key topics are:

1) Potential environmental impacts of the growth of international trade
2) National policies to address green trade
3) International regulations and rules of green trade
4) International/regional sustainable standards for greener trade
5) Corporate responsibility to promote green trade
6) NGOs for equitable and gender-inclusive green trade development
7) One Belt and One Road: opportunity and challenges
8) Greening agro-commodity supply chains
9) Building a Green Free Trade Zone

Deadline for application for participation and paper/speech abstracts is 20 October. The conference host will financially support the accommodation during the conference for eligible participants and there is no registration fees will apply for participation in the Conference.

For the details of conference objectives, application and submission, please visit here. 

Should you have any question, please contact Conference Secretariat cgep@mail.bnu.edu.cn

ARTNeT is pleased to report on its contribution to the ASEAN Economic Integration Forum 2016 (AEIF2016) which was organized by the National University of Malaysia, World Trade Institute and the University of Oxford with the topic 'Towards Global ASEAN: Prospects, Impacts and Challenges' on 14 and 15 September in Kuala Lumpur. The forum brought together international and regional experts to critically analyze the prospects and challenges of economic integration among ASEAN members and the region, and to discuss the socio-economic and political impacts of ASEAN’s economic integration on its member states and the region. Further information on the AEIF2016 can be accessed here.

The topics discussed included ASEAN as a model for regional integration post-Brexit, ASEAN and the Ocean, and ASEAN in the global context.

ASEAN was established by the Bangkok Declaration in 1967 so the plan is to host AEIF2017 in Bangkok to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The topic of AEIF2017 will be 'Inclusive ASEAN'.

Asia-Pacific Trade and Investment Agreement Database (APTIAD) is an online database of trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific region. The database contains information on all preferential agreements within the region, an agreement-country matrix, and an advanced search engine allowing to locate agreements by country, agreement name, status, scope, WTO notification status, and keywords. You can download the full database in CSV format, updated as of 31 July 2016.

The Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), in collaboration with UNCTAD and ESCAP, invites submissions of unpublished papers on how the digitization of products and processes is impacting the trade-development relationship.

The digital economy and the digitization of trade processing has tremendous implications for commercial exchange. Countries are less constrained than ever before by traditional factor endowments and technological capacity. But what does digitization mean for economic development, and how does digitization of products and processes change our existing understanding of the links between trade and development?

Topics could include, but are not restricted to:

- Impacts of disruptions in trade processing (fintech, single window)
- Impacts of the digitization of production
- Regulatory considerations
- Traditional vs new economic actors (WTO, banks)
- E-commerce and under-represented trade segments (eg. women, SMEs)
- New technologies (blockchain, Legal Entity Identifiers)
- Digital divide
- TPP and other regional regulations

We encourage contributions on Asia and the Pacific, either as a region or studies of individual economies or sub-regions. Submissions should be data-driven. Both applied economic research and policy oriented papers are welcome.

ADBI will cover registration, flight, and hotel costs of one author per paper. Presenters must be from ADB member countries. Accepted papers will be considered for publication as ADBI Working Papers and selected papers from the workshop as part of an edited book volume or in special issue of a leading academic journal.

Initial submission (long abstract or paper draft): 10 October

For more submission details, please visit here.

 

The School of Economics and Finance at Queensland University of Technology will host the 12th Australasian Trade Workshop on 18-19 March 2017. The keynote speakers for this year will be Jota Ishikawa (Hitotsubashi) and Udo Kreickemeier (TU Dresden).

The school invite colleagues in this field (JEL-Classification F0 to F2) to submit papers for presentation at the workshop. If you are interested, please send your abstract or preferably your complete paper (in .pdf format) to tradeworkshop@anu.edu.au.

The deadline for submissions is November 1, 2016.

Conference participants are expected to serve as discussants at the workshop. There is no registration fee. Unfortunately the school are unable to offer financial assistance to participants. Upon acceptance, you will be asked to book your travel and accommodation independently.

If you have any further questions about the workshop, please e-mail Takae Warwick at takae.warwick@qut.edu.au or Pascalis Raimondos at pascalis.raimondos@qut.edu.au.

The Southeast Asian Journal of Economics (SAJE) is the successor of the Chulalongkorn Journal of Economics, a leading economic journal in Thailand established in 1972 and published in English since 1995. Southeast Asian Economic Journal is currently in group-1 TCI and ACI. The SAJE aims to create a forum to address the many challenges of economic and social development in the framework of the progressive economic integration among the nations comprising Southeast Asia. The focus of the SAJE is to disseminate theoretical, empirical, and experimental economic articles, providing economic analysis and policy options for Southeast Asia and beyond. The SAJE is a refereed journal that seeks contributions from scholars, commentators, and policymakers from both the private and public sectors and reaches a readership of academics and policymakers.

Southeast Asian Journal of Economics (ISSN Print 2286-8984 , ISSN Online 2465-5120) is published 2 issues a year in January to June and July to December by the ARTNeT member, Faculty of Economics, Chulalongkorn University. The journal has been published since December 2013. Responsibility for published articles rests exclusively with the individual authors. The views and opinions expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect those of the Editors, the Editorial Secretariat, the Editorial Board, and the International Advisory Board.

For the submission details please visit here.

 

Are you a student or recent graduate who is interested in economic affairs? Trade Policy and Analysis Section, Trade, Investment and Innovation Division at ESCAP is now looking for new interns in its Bangkok office!

Trade Policy and Analysis Section is a busy and dynamic team within ESCAP. The section is involved in a wide variety of work which includes: research and analysis on issues related to trade, regional integration and development; providing training and capacity building on trade policy for policymakers and researchers; delivering advisory services to member governments on aspects of trade policy, including trade negotiations; organizing regional dialogues, meetings and fora. Much of our work is focused on the development needs of the region’s least developed countries and other countries with special needs.

Duties may include, but are not limited to:
• Background research, literature reviews and drafting inputs on trade and trade-related issues (such as inclusive and sustainable development linkages to trade), including contributions to ESCAP publications
• Support for the Asia-Pacific Research and Training Network (ARTNeT) including work to improve research dissemination by various channels (e.g. social media, webpage)
• Monitoring and evaluation of regional trade agreements and maintaining the APTIAD database
• Data analysis on trade flows, tariffs, non-tariff measures trends
• Support for section events, including through the website and social media
• Logistical support for training events, conferences and meetings

For the application details please visit INSPIRA (internship post number: 53482). We look forward to hearing from you!

CDRI seeks qualified national applicants for various positions as Researchers in its 6 research programmes - Agriculture, Economics, Education, Environment, Governance and Health. 

CDRI researchers are appointed at the level of research assistant, research associate, research fellow or senior research fellow depending on their qualifications and experience. Researchers are responsible for a range of duties, depending on their level of appointment and specific position requirements, including: leading and facilitating a research programme or project(s), contributing to the design of research projects and preparation of proposals, identifying and reviewing relevant literature, contributing to the design, preparation and implementation of surveys, collecting, processing and analysing information and data, and writing reports based on the analyses, and other tasks as required by CDRI. 

For application details please visit here.

The ASEAN-India economic integration has made substantial progress in recent years. India’s engagements with Southeast and East Asia have received new momentum under the Act East Policy (AEP). In 2017, ASEAN and India will be celebrating 25 years of their dialogue relations. The relationship is set to deepen in coming days as ASEAN and India step up their collaboration across a range of economic and strategic issues, including trade and connectivity, culture, people-to-people links, trans-national terrorism, and maritime security. However, both of them have been facing several challenges, which call for concerted efforts by ASEAN and India. With ASEAN and India working towards establishing a Comprehensive Free Trade Area through Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement, their cooperation will be key to promoting economic stability, competitiveness, growth and integration in the region. This book is a timely initiative to review the past and suggest the ways to further strengthen the economic partnership. It primarily deals with the economic integration issues between ASEAN and India, and assesses policy priorities, effectiveness, implementation imperatives and challenges. Each chapter in this book tries to capture essential features of the crosscutting issues and attempts to draw some policy implications. It will be a valuable reference for policymakers, academics and practitioners.

We are living in a world where information is commonly gathered online and transferred across borders. With the global economy going digital, cross-border bandwidth has increased 45 times in the past decade. In terms of absolute quantity, it has reached 211.3 terabits per second (Tbps) in 2014, up from 4.7 Tbps in 2005. From economic aspects such as industrial innovation, market expansion and efficiency, there is much to benefit from the freer cross-border flow of data.
However, there lie diverse policy challenges amid such benefits. One of the most important policy issues is constructing an adequate personal data protection system. As data-driven innovation makes swift advancements, it is necessary to achieve both the policy goals of protecting personal information and promoting its usage. Second, We need to consider issues of cross-border information flows from strategic perspectives, considering the present industial competitiveness and future goals. Third, regional cooperation is required to build a larger market with regulatory harmonization. EU's Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe in 2015 is an foremost example.
The free flow of Information on the internet is now becoming a core source of innovation, and will bring about fundamental economic changes. The global economy must reform the regulatory environment in order to accelerate data and ICT-based innovation. Furthermore, we should give more thought to building a global economy that enjoys the fruits of digital innovation in a more balanced way, given its winner-takes-all tendency.

The Group of Twenty (G20) Summit at Hangzhou took place in September 2016 in the backdrop of adverse prospects for global trade given its sluggish growth and the rising protectionist sentiments. While committing to tackling protectionism, the summit expressed concerns on the overcapacity in global steel production and state- support that was distorting global markets. It established a global mechanism for monitoring overcapacity in world steel production. This marked the success of a rare strategic alignment between some major developed- and developing-country members of the G20, notably the United States, Europe and India, in tackling China’s command over the global steel industry. It also marked a shift in the discourse on the role of marketdistorting state-support in global trade – with China, rather than industrial nations, now being accused of resorting to such support in greater measure.

The Trade and Development Report (TDR) 2016 titled 'Structural transformation for inclusive and sustained growth' reviews recent trends in the global economy and focuses on the policies needed to foster structural transformation.

It observes that global economic growth remains weak, growing at a rate below 2.5 per cent, and global trade slowed down dramatically to around 1.5 per cent in 2015 and 2016, compared to 7 per cent before the crisis.

The loss of dynamism in the advanced economies, combined with low commodity prices and global financial instability, is having knock-on effects on most developing countries. Developing economies will grow on average less than 4 percent this year, but with considerable variation across countries and regions: while Latin America is in recession and growth in Africa and West Asia is slowing down to around 2 per cent, East, South-East and South Asia is still growing at a rate close to 5 per cent.

Considered in a long-term perspective, most developing countries outside some Asian sub-regions have failed to significantly reduce the income gap with developed economies. The big investment push in developing regions remains one of the unfulfilled promises of the more open global economy set in place in the 1980s and 1990s; and after general growth accelerations at the beginning of the century, convergence is now losing steam with a more challenging international environment. To attain sustained and inclusive growth, countries need to adjust their policy strategies in order to advance structural transformation.

School of Economics, University of Adelaide (website)

Trade between Australia and the EU, 1990 - 2015

 

Policy Research Institute (PRI) (website)

Bangladesh’s South Asian Regional Quandary

Centre for WTO Studies (website)

‘REGULATORY CHILL’: TAKING RIGHT TO REGULATE FOR A SPIN

WTO and its implications for India and China: Food security Vs Naked Commercial Interest

Centre for Economic & Social Development (CESD) (website)

Intergovernmental fiscal relations in Myanmar: current processes and future priorities in public financial management reform

Korea Institute for Internaional Economic Policy (KIEP) (website)

Study on the Strategies for Mega FTAs: A Comparative Analysis of TBT Chapters of Korea’s FTAs

Overseas Expansion Strategy of Major Countries’ Firms toward Viet Nam and the Implications for Korea

Estimation of China’s Investments on North Korea after 2000s

The Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore (ISAS-NUS) (website)
Ten Challenges for the New RBI Governor

China-India Talks: Elusive ‘Strategic’ Consensus

India-Vietnam Ties: The Stamp of ‘Modi Doctrine’

South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics and Environment (SAWTEE) (link)

Trage Insight: South Asian Approach to Sustainable Development Goals

Economic Research institute for Asean and East Asia (ERIA) (website)

Optimal Trade Policy and Production Location

 

Vlasta Macku is retiring from her role as the Chief in UNCTAD Virtual Institute (Vi), where she is the founder in 2004 as well. Under her direction, the Vi network has expanded from its 5 founding members to the current 131 academic institutions. For 12 years, Vi has helped universities and research centres in developing and transition countries strengthen their teaching and research of trade and development issues.

With the shared vision on the role of trade in development, Vi has worked with ARTNeT successfully for years on numerous projects. We are grateful for Vlasta's support and collaboration. We wish Vlasta all the best for the new phase of her life!  

The ARTNeT Secretariat welcomes submissions of policy briefs, working papers, book reports, research reports, and book reviews by ARTNeT members, partners and collaborators. For any submission to be considered, the editorial 'Guidelines for Submissions to the ARTNeT Working Papers Series' must be adhered to.

If you are an ARTNeT member, partner or collaborator and would like to publicise your publications, research or events in the next newsletter, please e-mail us at artnetontrade@un.org.