A Brookings Institution Press and Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and Sciences-Po, Paris publication This thoughtful volume assesses the likely impact of reformed trade policies on the poorest of the poor—those on the bottom economic rungs in developing nations. The focus on a spectrum of poor nations across different regions provides some helpful and hopeful guidelines regarding the likely impacts of a global trade reform, agreed upon under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, as well as the impact of such reforms on economic development. In order to facilitate lesson-drawing across different regions, each country study utilizes a similar methodology. They combine information on trade policy at the product level with income and consumption data at the household level, thus capturing effects both on the macro level and in individual households where development policies ideally should improve day-to-day life. This uniformity of research approach across the country studies allows for a deeper and more robust comparison of results.

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.

Free trade can help 500 million people escape poverty and inject.

Trade will have an important role at the global level in generating the growth necessary for reducing extreme poverty to 3 percent and boosting prosperity for the poorest 40 percent by 2030. To identify the most important challenges that exist in maximizing the positive impact of trade on poverty, we need to understand who the poor are, where they are, and what economic activities they undertake. To this end, the study highlights particularly relevant dimensions of poverty: rural poverty in remote areas, informality, fragile and conflict situations, and women. For each of these issues, this study considers the main traderelated barriers and challenges, along with policy responses to address them. It shows the importance of the multilateral trading system and of the Doha Round, as well as the important role of the WBG and WTO in promoting coherence and implementing trade policies in a way that delivers the greatest possible benefits for the poor.

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.

Global value chains (GVCs) powered the surge of international trade after 1990 and now account for almost half of all trade. This shift enabled an unprecedented economic convergence: poor countries grew rapidly and began to catch up with richer countries. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, however, the growth of trade has been sluggish and the expansion of GVCs has stalled. Meanwhile, serious threats have emerged to the model of trade-led growth. New technologies could draw production closer to the consumer and reduce the demand for labor. And trade conflicts among large countries could lead to a retrenchment or a segmentation of GVCs. World Development Report 2020: Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains examines whether there is still a path to development through GVCs and trade. It concludes that technological change is, at this stage, more a boon than a curse. GVCs can continue to boost growth, create better jobs, and reduce poverty provided that developing countries implement deeper reforms to promote GVC participation; industrial countries pursue open, predictable policies; and all countries revive multilateral cooperation.

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).