Trade Competitiveness Diagnostic Toolkit

Trade Competitiveness Diagnostic Toolkit
Author: Jose Guilherme Reis
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2012-03-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0821389386

This toolkit provides a framework, guidelines, and practical tools for conducting an analysis of a country's trade competitiveness in terms of growth and share performance, diversification, and quality.

Competitiveness and Death

Competitiveness and Death
Author: Gary Winslett
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2021-03-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 047213227X

Competitiveness and Death examines the increase and reduction of regulatory barriers to trade across three industries: environmental, labor, and safety rules on automobiles, consumer protection regulations on meat, and intellectual property regulations on medicines. The fundamental negotiation in trade and regulatory policymaking occurs between businesses, activists, and government officials. Gary Winslett builds on new trade theories to explain when and why businesses are most likely to lobby governments to reduce these regulatory trade barriers. He argues that businesses prevail when they can connect with broader concerns about national economic competitiveness. He examines how activist organizations overcome collective action problems and defend regulatory differences, arguing that they succeed when they can link their desire for barriers with preventing needless death. Competitiveness and Death provides a political companion to new trade theories in economics, questioning cleavage-based explanations of trade politics, demonstrating the underappreciated importance of activists, suggesting the limits of globalization, providing in-depth examination of previously ignored trade negotiations, qualifying the California Effect (the shift toward stricter regulatory standards), and showing the relative rarity of regulations used as disguised protectionism.

Innovation, Human Capital and Trade Competitiveness

Innovation, Human Capital and Trade Competitiveness
Author: Marzenna Anna Weresa
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 493
Release: 2013-11-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3319020722

This work focuses on researching and establishing the importance of human capital and innovation as determinants of competitive advantages in international trade—in the context of rapidly evolving technological advancement, globalization, and economic integration. The processes that accompany the shift from industrial economics to a knowledge-based economy are currently the object of interest of both scientists, politicians, investors and entrepreneurs. In many countries, the traditional sources of socioeconomic development, such as low labor costs, availability of inexpensive raw materials, and favorable geographic location are waning. These economies are searching for new sources of competitive advantage that will allow for maintaining growth, among other things by boosting participation in international trade. The book explores non-traditional drivers of competitiveness in both theory and practice. First, chapters 1 through 4 present theoretical and methodological aspects of the relationships among international trade, human capital and innovation. Here the authors address the controversy associated with the concept of competitiveness itself and its measurement, while paying special attention to the political development of comparative advantages related to international trade. The second part of the monograph, chapters 5 through 8, is of empirical nature. This section contains case studies of selected countries that represent models of various national innovation systems. Finally, the theoretical and practical aspects are integrated, allowing policymakers and financial and business leaders to consider how their decisions can influence their countries’ competitive positions through their investments in innovation and human capital.

International Trade, Competitive Advantage and Developing Economies

International Trade, Competitive Advantage and Developing Economies
Author: Caf Dowlah
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2015-07-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317447921

Available research suggests that less developed countries have significant competitive advantage over developed countries in three major areas of international trade: agriculture, textiles and clothing (T&C), and cross-border labor mobility. Incidentally, these are also the trade sectors which experienced widespread protectionist measures, especially in developed world, for decade after decade. Under the World Trade Organization (WTO), which replaced the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) in 1995, much of the restrictions in T&C trade has been phased out, but still this sector faces much higher tariff and non-tariff barriers than any other manufacturing sector in world economy. The agricultural sector also experienced significant dismantling of deeply entrenched trade barriers under the WTO over the course of last two decades, but the sector still remains plagued with quite extensive domestic supports, export subsidies, and tariff barriers. At the same time, despite both theoretical expositions and empirical trends point to significant potential gains from cross-border labor mobility, the sector remains mired in a complex quagmire of economic and political restrictions around the world. Thus, all three sectors in which less developed countries have exports interests still remain less liberalized than the sectors in which developed countries have exports interests. This book provides an in-depth and up-to-date scholarly analysis of all three trade sectors—agriculture, T&C and cross-border labor mobility—with a penetrating scrutiny of historical backgrounds and developments, crosscurrents of interests and perspectives of both developed and developing countries, and evolving trade patterns and potentials in a more liberalized and globalized world economy. The book also identifies critical economic issues and options for less developed countries in the WTO negotiations for further liberalization of agriculture, T&C, and cross-border labor mobility. This volume will be an important point of reference for students, scholars, and practitioners of international trade, economic development, development economics, and WTO-related issues.

Valuing Services in Trade

Valuing Services in Trade
Author: Sebastian Saez
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2015-01-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1464801568

This Toolkit provides a framework, guidelines, and set of practical tools to conduct an analysis and diagnostic of trade competitiveness in the services sector and to identify both the main constraints to improved competitiveness and the appropriate policy responses.

Trade, Technology, and International Competitiveness

Trade, Technology, and International Competitiveness
Author: Irfan-ul-Haque
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1995-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780821334188

World Bank Technical Paper No. 300. Provides an overview of past experiences with the introduction of agricultural technologies in World Bank-funded projects in Mediterranean climates, with an emphasis on the Middle East and North African region. The authors review the adequacy of present crop and livestock technologies, identify technical and socio-economic constraints on their adoption, and describe prospective technologies for pilot testing and full-scale introduction in future Bank-funded projects.

Services for Trade Competitiveness

Services for Trade Competitiveness
Author: Claire H. Hollweg
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2019-07-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1464814066

Recognizing that services affect the ability of countries and their firms to compete on international markets, the World Bank’s Trade and Regional Integration Unit has developed an extensive work program to promote the performance of countries’ domestic services sectors, including services trade. Services for Trade Competitiveness presents selected applications of new methodologies that were developed to assess the competitiveness of countries’ services sectors, discern the types of barriers to services that exist in the regulatory environment, and identify the resulting policy implications. Its assessments are designed for a wide audience, including policy makers in developing countries and development practitioners in international organizations, policy-making institutions, and academia. The purpose of this book is to help policy makers in developing countries make informed policy choices to increase their chances of benefiting from the increasing prominence of services in international trade.

International Trade Theory and Competitive Models

International Trade Theory and Competitive Models
Author: Ronald Winthrop Jones
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: International trade
ISBN: 9789813200661

World-renowned economist Ronald W. Jones gets to the essence of international trade theory in this collection of articles that span over half a century of his published work. As the global economy has grown, so too has the need for a deeper rooted understanding of trade -- and its assorted benefits. With clear, simplifying prose, Jones elucidates the Ricardian, Heckscher-Ohlin, and Specific-Factors models of general equilibrium theory. Jones' pioneering work anticipates, among other changes in our time, the creation of far-flung supply chains brought about by the falling costs of service links. The theoretical, technical, and historical insights in the text are peppered with personal notes that capture modern intellectual development in the field, providing a bedrock foundation in international trade for students and practitioners alike.

Competitive Advantage

Competitive Advantage
Author: Michael E. Porter
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2008-06-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1416595848

Now beyond its eleventh printing and translated into twelve languages, Michael Porter’s The Competitive Advantage of Nations has changed completely our conception of how prosperity is created and sustained in the modern global economy. Porter’s groundbreaking study of international competitiveness has shaped national policy in countries around the world. It has also transformed thinking and action in states, cities, companies, and even entire regions such as Central America. Based on research in ten leading trading nations, The Competitive Advantage of Nations offers the first theory of competitiveness based on the causes of the productivity with which companies compete. Porter shows how traditional comparative advantages such as natural resources and pools of labor have been superseded as sources of prosperity, and how broad macroeconomic accounts of competitiveness are insufficient. The book introduces Porter’s “diamond,” a whole new way to understand the competitive position of a nation (or other locations) in global competition that is now an integral part of international business thinking. Porter's concept of “clusters,” or groups of interconnected firms, suppliers, related industries, and institutions that arise in particular locations, has become a new way for companies and governments to think about economies, assess the competitive advantage of locations, and set public policy. Even before publication of the book, Porter’s theory had guided national reassessments in New Zealand and elsewhere. His ideas and personal involvement have shaped strategy in countries as diverse as the Netherlands, Portugal, Taiwan, Costa Rica, and India, and regions such as Massachusetts, California, and the Basque country. Hundreds of cluster initiatives have flourished throughout the world. In an era of intensifying global competition, this pathbreaking book on the new wealth of nations has become the standard by which all future work must be measured.