Trade Globalization And Poverty

Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.

Citing a paucity of empirical evidence on the poverty and distributional impacts of trade policy reform in Ghana as the main motivation for this volume, the editors (both of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research at the U. of Ghana) present eleven papers that combine theory and econometric analysis in an effort to assess linkages between globalization, trade, and poverty (including gendered aspects). Specific topics examined include manufacturing employment and wage effects of trade liberalization; the influence of education on trade liberalization impacts on household welfare; trade liberalization and manufacturing firm productivity; the impact of elimination of trade taxes on poverty and income distribution; food prices, tax reforms, and consumer welfare under trade liberalization; impacts on tariff revenues; and impacts on cash cropping, gender, and household welfare; Distributed in the US by Stylus. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

An outstanding work, written to celebrate the seventieth birthday of Jagdish Bhagwati, this rigorously academic and critical volume represents an important contribution to the understanding of many aspects of globalization.

"There has been much debate about how much poor people in developing countries gain from trade openness, as one aspect of 'globalization.' Ravallion views the issue through both 'macro' and 'micro' empirical lenses. The macro lens uses cross-country comparisons and aggregate time series data. The micro lens uses household-level data combined with structural modeling of the impacts of specific trade reforms. The author presents case studies for China and Morocco. Both the macro and micro approaches cast doubt on some wide generalizations from both sides of the globalization debate. Additionally the micro lens indicates considerable heterogeneity in the welfare impacts of trade openness, with both gainers and losers among the poor. The author identifies a number of covariates of the individual gains. The results point to the importance of combining trade reforms with well-designed social protection policies." -- Cover verso.

Globalization, Poverty, and Income Inequality examines the relationship between globalization and trade liberalization, and poverty and income inequality, using Indonesia as a case study. Contributors examine how advances in coffee certification, treatments for visual disabilities, and property rights, among other factors, have had both meritorious and deleterious effects on the local population. Ultimately, they describe an ambiguous relationship between trade liberalization and inequality, both of which can increase or decrease in proportion to one another depending on region and sector. This empirically driven work provides a nuanced view of the trade-poverty relationship, contributing balanced testimony to policy debates being held internationally.

Globalization - the growing integration of economies and societies around the world, is a complex process. The focus of this research is the impact of economic integration on developing countries and especially the poor people living in these countries. Whether economic integration supports poverty reduction and how it can do so more effectively are key questions asked. The research yields 3 main findings with bearings on current policy debates about globalization. Firstly, poor countries with some 3 billion people have broken into the global market for manufactures and services, and this successful integration has generally supported poverty reduction. Secondly, inclusion both across countries and within them is important as a number of countries (pop. 2 billion) are failing as states, trading less and less, and becoming marginal to the world economy. Thirdly, standardization or homogenization is a concern - will economic integration lead to cultural or institutional homogenization?

Openness to trade is a key element of economic policy; continuing extreme poverty in developing countries is a disgrace. This Handbook examines how concerns about the world's poor should affect our attitude towards trade liberalization. Part I draws on economic analysis and practical experience to construct a framework to analyse the links between trade liberalization and poverty. It shows policy-makers how to identify the critical features in their economies so they can ensure that the poor benefit from liberalization. Part II explores the reform of particular sectors -- agriculture, services, etc., and particular instruments of trade policy -- export subsidies, anti-dumping measures, etc. It presents an economic analysis of each type of reform, shows the likely outcome for the poor, and discusses the issue's status on the World Trade Organization's agenda. Book jacket.

How the rise of globalization over the past two centuries helps explain the income gap between rich and poor countries today. Today's wide economic gap between the postindustrial countries of the West and the poorer countries of the third world is not new. Fifty years ago, the world economic order—two hundred years in the making—was already characterized by a vast difference in per capita income between rich and poor countries and by the fact that poor countries exported commodities (agricultural or mineral products) while rich countries exported manufactured products. In Trade and Poverty, leading economic historian Jeffrey G. Williamson traces the great divergence between the third world and the West to this nexus of trade, commodity specialization, and poverty. Analyzing the role of specialization, de-industrialization, and commodity price volatility with econometrics and case studies of India, Ottoman Turkey, and Mexico, Williamson demonstrates why the close correlation between trade and poverty emerged. Globalization and the great divergence were causally related, and thus the rise of globalization over the past two centuries helps account for the income gap between rich and poor countries today.