Progress in Development Studies current issue

Editorial: International institutions: Twenty-first century challenge

Sapsford, D. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:13:08 PDT

From despair to hope: the challenge of promoting poverty reduction

Krueger, A. O. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:13:08 PDT

Fair distribution of welfare gain: application of the equity principle in forming international institutions

Chen, J.-r. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:13:08 PDT

International institutions play the major role in the current global governance to provide global public goods (GPG) efficiently and to regulate cross border externalities (CBE) effectively. Also there are many international institutions. But the global community has been continually confronted with new CBEs, new GPGs and, thus, the need to implement new or to reform existing international institution. Welfare improvement is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for emerging international institution. In addition to the welfare improvement, an agreement of the potential members about the distribution of the welfare gain between them is a further necessary condition, while both together are necessary and sufficient for the emergence of an international institution. In this paper, we are going to discuss how the potential members can achieve an agreement to distribute the welfare gains of setting up an international institution. Equity considerations have a strong influence on observed payoff divisions. The equity principle is the formal structure of equity consideration. This principle is well known in the social psychology literature. The equity principle in international politics is equity consideration in respect of the strength of players. This can provide a norm or a fundamental principle of international bargaining to distribute the net welfare gain of international cooperation (IC).

Social knowledge and international policymaking at the World Bank

Toye, J. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:13:08 PDT

The production of social knowledge in all international organizations is problematic because all are public bureaucracies. The World Bank provides a case study of the problems of managing in-house research in an international public bureaucracy. Not only are there managerial constraints on what the Bank is willing to publish, but the binding constraints on publication evolve. The evolution in managerial objectives at the Bank in recent years and the factors that have influenced shifts in its rhetoric and policy are examined. Are these adjustments merely rhetorical? Recent research on poverty reduction, governance and conditionality is discussed to gauge how far the Bank has moved.

International institutions: seen from the perspective of Austrian Economics

Socher, K. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:13:08 PDT

Austrian Economics tries to minimize the role of the state. International institutions, like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), seen under this perspective, often try to fulfil functions of states which are not necessary, for instance, fixing exchange rates or redistribute income. They should concentrate on correcting market failures, like international public goods, when they cannot be supplied by the market, or internalize externalities. But even in these cases, state failures have to be avoided. Such state failures happened especially in countries transforming from socialist to market economies and in advising these states by international institutions.

International institutions, globalization and the inequality among nations

Dutt, A. K., Mukhopadhyay, K. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:13:08 PDT

In the 1950s, Gunnar Myrdal pointed out that while inequality between regions within many economically advanced countries was falling due to the policies of national government, inequality between countries was growing, given the absence of anything resembling a world government. Since then, international institutions such as the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) have grown in size and scope. This paper uses econometric techniques to argue that these institutions, by liberalizing and increasing international trade and capital flows, have not had the effect of reducing inequality across nations and may, in fact, have exacerbated it.

Should the WTO deal with e-trade taxation issues?

Chen, J.-r., Smekal, C. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:13:08 PDT

Electronic commerce may be a great equalizer that helps to reduce, or even to eliminate, distance-related barriers to trade, but it can also exacerbate a so-called ‘digital dividend’ vis-à-vis countries with technological and infrastructural deficiencies, especially developing countries. In the following we concentrate on trade distortion caused by taxation of e-trade in intangible goods. We believe this will have a particular ramification for the developing world. General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) provisions may be relevant to many concerns with respect to the regulations of e-commerce, such as online privacy protection, illegal or illicit content, cyber crime and fraud, en-forcement of contracts, consumer protection, and taxation. In this paper, we will focus our debate mainly on the issues of taxation of e-trade with respect to the two basic principles of the WTO, that is. the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) and the National Treatment (NT) principles.

Green room politics and the WTO's crisis of representation

Jones, K. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:13:08 PDT

World Trade Organization (WTO) Green Room meetings are small gatherings of representatives from up to 30 member countries, invited by the Director-General. They are designed to provide the basis for a consensus on critical negotiating issues that can be brought to the WTO membership as a whole. Green rooms appear to be a necessary feature of consensus building in such a large organization, but they have been criticized because they tend to favor representation from large and high-income member countries. This paper discusses the impact of the green room on the WTO decision-making process and the possibilities of reform.

The Doha development agenda of the WTO: possible institutional implications

Reiterer, M. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:13:08 PDT

Size of membership, diverging interest because of different stages of development and the depth of regulation undertaken or foreseen in the World Trade Organization (WTO) made the economics and politics of international trade negotiations more complicated. This has repercussions on the negotiating mechanics in the WTO including the continued appropriateness of the technique of ‘rounds’. At the same time, the rational of further trade liberalization in the context of sustainable development is questioned. The widening scope of issues covered – which impact of domestic policies give raise to – quests for more transparency and accountability. The lack of adequate know-how renders the effective participation of developing countries in the negotiating round more difficult or even impossible. New forms of network formation – drawing on the many forms of international cooperation, participation and agenda setting – have to be developed in order to maintain the WTO as the centre of the multilateral rule-based system.

The stability architecture of EMU

Liebscher, K. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:13:08 PDT