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41. Saving the WTO from the national security exception

Author:
Warren Maruyama and Alan Wm. Wolff
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
For any member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) not making alternative arrangements, enforceability of the rules of the global trading system, a distinguishing feature of the WTO, ceased to exist on December 11, 2019, because the United States blocked appointments to the Appellate Body of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. A major obstacle to the United States accepting any resolution of this impasse—thus permitting dispute settlement to once again be binding on all WTO members—is settling the issue of whether claims of national security to legitimize trade measures are reviewable. This is a red line for the United States, which argues this claim is nonreviewable. In the emerging area of great power competition, the United States is unlikely to accept a return to fully effective WTO dispute settlement absent a compromise that finds determinations of national security nonjusticiable. This paper offers a compromise: There would be no adjudication of whether a trade measure was justified under the WTO’s national security exception, but those WTO members adversely affected would have an immediate right to rebalance trade concessions themselves by imposing retaliatory trade measures against the WTO member invoking the exception.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, National Security, and World Trade Organization
Political Geography:
Global Focus

42. Non-economic loss and damage: closing the knowledge gap

Author:
International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD)
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD)
Abstract:
Climate-related loss and damage is escalating, with many countries experiencing new forms of climate impact, of increasing intensity. The focus until now has been on calculating the economic repercussions of climate risk. Its wider impacts and resulting hidden costs of climate change — such as loss of cultural heritage — are less understood and harder to quantify. This knowledge gap on non-economic loss and damage, which is largely due to limited coordination around research and sparse evidence originating from the global South, urgently needs addressing. This briefing proposes a comprehensive approach for building the evidence base on non-economic loss and damage, particularly the creation of a Loss and Damage Research Observatory. This online platform will lay the foundations for a collaborative South–South–North community of practitioners, ultimately leading to informed policy on this critical area of climate action.
Topic:
Climate Change, Health, Displacement, Conservation, Indigenous, Resilience, and Biodiversity
Political Geography:
Global Focus

43. Structural transformation and international trade: Evidence from the China shock

Author:
Clément Nedoncelle and Julien Wolfersberger
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
How does international trade affect structural transformation in developing countries? We use data on sectoral allocation of labour and value-added in 46 developing economies over the period 1995–2017 and exploit for identification plausibly exogenous variation in manufacturing imports from China. We find that the so-called ‘China shock’ largely slows down the transformation of low- and middle-income economies out of agriculture. In our main specification industrialization decreases by 0.49 per cent on average for each additional per cent of manufacturing imports from China. It highlights a competition effect where exposure to Chinese imports is largely detrimental to structural transformation. These results hold across geographical regions, with a difference in Sub-Saharan Africa, where international trade causes an increase in the size of the services sector.
Topic:
Development, Economies, Trade, Industrialization, and Structural Transformation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

44. Digital de-industrialization, global value chains, and structural transformation: Empirical evidence from low- and middle-income countries

Author:
Karishma Banga, Pankhury Harbansh, and Surendar Singh
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Digitalization and shifting patterns of globalization are fast changing the rules of the game for countries embarking on a path of industrialization. In this study, we empirically examine the impact of digitalization and global value chains on structural transformation using a crosscountry panel of 51 economies in the GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database for the period 1990–2018. The analysis is based on a novel cross-country panel combining information from the Economic Transformation Database with the UNCTAD EORA data set, World Development Indicators, and Penn World Tables. Structural transformation is examined through changes across three variables: changes in manufacturing labour productivity, manufacturing employment share, and country-level structural change. To address issues related to endogeneity and country fixed effects, we use methodologies of fixed effects with instrumental variables and the two-step system GMM estimator. Results indicate that digitalization has a positive impact on structural change and manufacturing labour productivity but a negative impact on manufacturing employment share, indicating a reallocation of labour from the agricultural sector into services. Overall global value chain participation, and particularly forward participation, has a positive impact on structural change and manufacturing labour productivity.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Industrialization, Global Value Chains, and Structural Transformation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

45. Sanction-busting through tax havens

Author:
Kerim Can Kavakli, Giovanna Marcolongo, and Diego Zambiasi
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Financial sanctions, which aim to economically hurt a target by restricting its access to financial assets and markets, require the ability to identify who owns an asset. Although experts have long claimed that offshore financial centres that offer secrecy (‘tax havens’) undermine sanctions by hiding ownership information, so far data limitations have prevented a rigorous test of this claim. We overcome this constraint using data from the Bank of International Settlements and the Offshore Leaks Database and conduct the first systematic analysis of the role that tax havens play in financial sanction evasion. Our main finding is that sanction targets reduce their funds in sanctioning countries while increasing their funds in tax havens. This displacement effect is stronger when the sanction coalition includes the United States or comprises more FATF or OECD members. Lastly, whether a tax haven is in the sanctioning coalition does not seem to make a difference. These findings confirm that target countries evade sanctions by moving large portions of their funds from sanctioning countries to tax havens. More broadly, our paper highlights a novel and geostrategically important role of tax havens in global finance.
Topic:
Sanctions, Financial Markets, Leaks, and Tax Havens
Political Geography:
Global Focus

46. More information, better knowledge? The effects of information campaigns on aid beneficiaries’ knowledge of aid projects

Author:
Alexander De Juan, Paul Hofman, and Carlo Koos
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Aid beneficiaries know very little about development interventions in their own communities. This lack of transparency and information is likely to reduce beneficiaries’ ability and willingness to become active in local development. It may also dampen intended aid effects on beneficiaries’ political and social attitudes. Can targeted information campaigns strengthen beneficiaries’ understanding of aid projects? We test the effects of two types of interventions: the provision of information only and the combination of information and feedback opportunities. We embed these interventions in a panel survey in rural Mali. Our information treatment is highly customized to specific local aid projects in respondents’ locations and corresponds to beneficiaries’ ex-ante information demands. Nonetheless, two months after the campaign, we find only small treatment effects on respondents’ project-specific knowledge (type, location) and no effects on their procedural knowledge (selection mechanisms). Only people with favourable ex-ante views of the state’s rule adherence and self-identified non-beneficiaries tend to update their views on procedural knowledge. Finally, we find that the combined information and feedback treatment has an effect on respondents’ subjective knowledge, which we interpret as promising mechanisms for engaging and identifying with aid projects.
Topic:
Fragile States, Development Aid, and Information
Political Geography:
Global Focus

47. Armed group opportunism in the face of recent crises: COVID-19 and climate change

Author:
Siobhan O'Neil
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Terrorist and other types of armed groups often exploit natural and human-made disasters and emergencies to advance their causes. This paper studies how some armed groups have responded to two recent global emergencies—climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines the messaging and actions of the Boko Haram in Nigeria and Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) dissident groups in Colombia in response to COVID and climatic shifts. The paper uses assessment methodology to look into unique survey evidence from each country in order to determine the public impact of armed group decision-making and responses to these emergencies. It also considers the potential policy implications of the findings presented herein.
Topic:
Climate Change, Non State Actors, Armed Forces, COVID-19, and Decision-Making
Political Geography:
Global Focus

48. Assessment of institutional set-up of results measurement and reporting systems for non-sovereign operations in development finance institutions

Author:
Patrick Mabuza, Francis H. Kemeze, Oluwatoba J. Omotilewa, Mamadou Bah, and Btissam Benkerroum
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Development finance institutions (DFIs) foster sustainable development through financing, advisory services, and technical assistance. They complement public investments in developing and underserved markets to unlock development opportunities and deliver development results. Whereas DFIs’ missions are known among practitioners, their development achievements are often less understood. Consequently, DFIs have developed different results measurement and reporting systems to document the impacts of their interventions. This includes recent efforts to harmonize development impact indicators for results measurement and reporting. However, less is known about methodologies used in development outcomes assessments, or institutional set-ups for measuring and reporting these outcomes. This hampers knowledge on what works or does not work from a development finance perspective, preventing feedback mechanisms for DFIs to learn from prior interventions, mitigate risks, and ultimately improve subsequent interventions. Using a newly developed integration index score of hard versus soft integration of results measurement and reporting systems, and primary and secondary data from eleven such systems within DFIs, this study examines the set-up and effectiveness of different results reporting systems and mechanisms currently in place in DFIs. Findings reveal that although all interviewed DFIs measure anticipated (ex-ante) and ex-post development outcomes, only 27 per cent operate a fully integrated results measurement and reporting system that permits a 360- degree feedback loop for development effectiveness.
Topic:
Development, Finance, and Assessment
Political Geography:
Global Focus

49. Building resilience knowledge for sustainable development: Insights from development studies

Author:
Albert Sanghoon Park
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper explores how the concept of resilience has been used in development studies. Set amidst the rise of resilience in sustainable development, it offers insights for scholars and policy-makers, alike. Sampling 419 resilience-oriented journal articles from 2017–22, it uses Kuhnian paradigms to analyse development knowledge production. This produces three key findings. First is the absence of a coherent resilience paradigm (with shared definitions, problems, and methods) in development studies. Second is its use, instead, by pre-existing paradigms as a theoretical add-on to better address complexity and/or as a new buzzword to repackage prior arguments. Third are latent possibilities for resilience as both a rallying call and siren song in sustainable development. Here, resilience discourses open vital space for development cooperation and climate action. However, its outcomes will depend on whether we can first understand precisely what we talk about when we talk about resilience.
Topic:
Development, Politics, Sustainability, Resilience, and Knowledge Production
Political Geography:
Global Focus

50. Gender and poverty as a feminist foreign policy priority

Author:
Joanne Crawford
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Women's Development Agency (IWDA)
Abstract:
This issues paper is dedicated to the late Sylvia Chant, who named household-level measurement as a barrier to evidence related to the ‘feminization of poverty.’ Her work underpinned the commitment of the author and International Women‘s Development Agency (IWDA) to change the way that poverty is measured so that its gendered dimensions are visible. As IWDA worked with othersi to create an alternative quantitative measure of poverty, Chant’s focus on the “feminization of responsibility and obligation – women’s increasing liability for dealing with poverty (responsibility), and their progressively less choice other than to do so (obligation)” ii informed the inclusion of voice, unpaid work and time use as dimensions of gendersensitive measurement of multidimensional poverty.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Poverty, Feminism, and Gender
Political Geography:
Global Focus