Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
971
result(s) for
"Bhagwati, Jagdish"
Sort by:
Termites in the trading system : how preferential agreements undermine free trade
This book shines a critical light on preferential trade agreements (PTAs), revealing how the rapid spread of PTAs endangers the world trading system. Numbering by now well over 300, and rapidly increasing, these preferential trade agreements, many taking the form of free trade agreements, have re-created the unhappy situation of the 1930s, when world trade was undermined by discriminatory practices. Whereas this was the result of protectionism in those days, ironically it is a result of misdirected pursuit of free trade via PTAs today. The world trading system is at risk again, the author argues, and the danger is palpable. Writing with his customary wit, panache and elegance, the author documents the growth of these PTAs, the reasons for their proliferation, and their deplorable consequences which include the near-destruction of the non-discrimination which was at the heart of the postwar trade architecture and its replacement by what he has called the spaghetti bowl of a maze of preferences. The author also documents how PTAs have undermined the prospects for multilateral freeing of trade, serving as stumbling blocks, instead of building blocks, for the objective of reaching multilateral free trade. In short, the author cogently demonstrates why PTAs are “Termites in the Trading System.”
eBook
Markets and Morality
The paper addresses two issues. First, economics has evolved both as a positive science and, from moral philosophy, also as a normative discipline. Advancing the public good requires that public policy walk on both these legs. Second, the criticism has been forcefully made that markets undermine morality. This contention is refuted in several ways.
Journal Article
The Muddles over Outsourcing
Critics have muddled the public debate over offshore outsourcing by using the term interchangeably to refer to altogether different phenomena such as on-line purchase of services, direct foreign investment and, sometimes, all imports. We argue that clarity requires distinguishing among these various phenomena and define outsourcing explicitly as the services trade at arm's length that does not require geographical proximity of the buyer and the seller–the so-called Mode 1 services in the WTO terminology–conducted principally via the electronic mediums such as the telephone, fax and Internet. The definition is appropriate because this is the phenomenon that is relatively new and scary in public consciousness and has fueled the recent “outsourcing” debate. Under this definition, the total number of the U.S. jobs outsourced annually is minuscule and is expected to remain so over the next decade, even on a gross basis (i.e., without adjusting for the jobs in-sourced from the U.S.). The fears that offshore outsourcing will lead to high-value jobs being replaced by low-value jobs down the road are also argued here to be implausible in view of several qualitative arguments to the contrary. We also demonstrate that offshore outsourcing of Mode 1 services raises no new analytical issues, contrary to what many fear. Thus, it leads to gains from trade (with the standard caveats applicable to conventional trade in goods) and, in specific cases, to income-distribution effects.
Journal Article
John Jackson: A Tribute
John Jackson was one of the giants in trade law, with Robert Hudec (who died some years ago) as his equal, though their abilities and interests nicely complemented each other. They both were read with profit, along with other luminaries such as Michael Trebilcock of Toronto, by economists such as myself. They also inspired modern trade-law stars such as my colleagues Petros Mavroidis, David Leebron at Rice, and Alan Sykes at Stanford.
Journal Article
Trade and Poverty in the Poor Countries
While freer trade, or openness in trade, is now widely regarded as economically benign, in the sense that it increases the size of the pie, the recent anti-globalization critics have suggested that it is socially malign on several dimensions, among them the question of poverty. Their contention is that trade accentuates, not ameliorates, and that it deepens, not diminishes, poverty in both the rich and the poor countries. The theoretical empirical analysis of the impact of freer trade on poverty in the rich and in the poor countries is not symmetric, of course. This paper focuses only on the latter. In doing so, a distinction is made between 2 different strands of argumentation: static and dynamic.
Journal Article
Sustaining India's Growth Miracle
The economy of India is growing at a rate of 8 percent per year, and its exports of goods and services have more than doubled in the past three years. Considering these trends, economists, scholars, and political leaders across the globe are beginning to wonder whether India's growth can be sustained.
The contributors to this volume analyze the forces behind India's emerging role as a world economic player and identify the hidden weaknesses that, if unaddressed, may slow the country's growth. Chapters suggest how to transform India's primarily rural population into a gainfully employed modern sector; methods to achieve fiscal sustainability and consolidation; infrastructure bottlenecks, especially in terms of finite energy resources; and, given the country's complex electoral government and global political position, the obstacles toward effecting policy reform.
Sustaining India's Growth Miracleis a valuable resource for practitioners, policymakers, students, and scholars. It tackles issues from political, economic, and academic perspectives, and the concluding chapter, a talk given by the commerce and industry minister of India, discusses the country's position as a world power, outlining several reasons for its success and exploring the difficulties that lie ahead.
eBook
Development and Planning
First published in 1972, this is a book of essays offered in honour of Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, the distinguished economist whose career started in mid-1920s Vienna and subsequently spanned Europe, Britain, the USA and many of the less developed countries of the world.The book includes reviews of past developments, chapters on development trade and value theory, an assessment of contemporary emerging economic patterns, development and trade policy, and investment policy. Further essays cover the intellectual history of development economics, general aspects of growth and economic policy in underdeveloped countries and the problems of income distribution and sectoral and regional development.
eBook