Aaditya Mattoo

Keith E. Maskus

Gnanaraj Chellaraj

Abstract: The impact of international students and skilled immigration in the United States on innovative activity is estimated using a model of idea generation. In the main specification a system of three equations is estimated, where dependent variables are total patent applications, patents awarded to U.S. universities, and patents awarded to other U.S. entities, each scaled by the domestic labor force. Results indicate that both international graduate students and skilled immigrants have a significant and positive impact on future patent applications, as well as on future patents awarded to university and nonuniversity institutions. The central estimates suggest that a 10 percent increase in the number of foreign graduate students would raise patent applications by 4.7 percent, university patent grants by 5.3 percent, and nonuniversity patent grants by 6.7 percent. Thus, reductions in foreign graduate students from visa restrictions could significantly reduce U.S. innovative activity. Increases in skilled immigration also have a positive, but smaller, impact on patenting.

The Contribution of Skilled Immigration and International Graduate Students to U.S. Innovation

Arti Grover Goswami

Sebastian Saez

Through country case studies as well as econometric analysis, this book attempts to identify the factors that have helped developing countries succeed in exporting services. It examines strategies that have been successful as well as those that have not delivered expected results..

A Developing Country Perspective

Exporting Services

Robert M. Stern

This book is designed to clarify India's interests in the World Trade Organization's Doha Development Agenda and to provide a blueprint for its strategy in multilateral negotiations. The focus is on facilitating domestic and external policy reforms that can serve to bolster India's participation in the multilateral trading system and to enhance the effectiveness of India's trade and related policies in achieving developmental goals. Individual chapters address the economic effects on India of the Uruguay Round Negotiations and the prospective Doha Agenda negotiations; the implications of the abolition of the Multi-Fiber Agreement; services issues and liberalization; telecommunications policy reforms; foreign direct investment; intellectual property rights; competition policy; government procurement; standards and technical barriers; trade and environment; and, finally, a comprehensive analysis of the major issues coupled with concrete proposals to guide India's participation in the Doha Development Agenda.

India and the WTO

Arvind Subramanian

This paper elaborates on a number of key principles that need to underpin a coherent and development-friendly architecture for the WTO. The key principles include enlarging the scope of WTO bargaining to include labor flows as well as capital flows; creating a structure that would provide a balance between furthering liberalization and providing some discretion or policy space to accommodate the inevitable political constraints; and minimizing the extent of regulatory harmonization. These principles, while applicable to all countries, may have less immediate relevance in addressing the problems of the least developed countries.

What Would a Development-Friendly WTO Architecture Really Look Like?

"International cooperation on climate change has floundered. With mutual recrimination between rich and poor countries, the zero-sum arithmetic of a shrinking global carbon budget, and shifting economic and bargaining power from old CO2 emitters to new--what Aaditya Mattoo and Arvind Subramanian call the "narrative," "adding up," and "new world" problems--the wonder is not the current impasse but belief that progress might be possible at all. Each of these problems must be addressed in a radically different way. First, the old narrative of recrimination must give way to a narrative based on recognition of common interests. Second, leaders must shift the focus away from cutting emissions to generating technology. Third, the old "cash-for-cuts" approach must be abandoned for one that requires contributions from each country calibrated in magnitude and form to its current level of development and future prospects."--Publisher's website.

A New Approach to Cooperation on Climate Change

Greenprint

Michele Ruta

Cristina Constantinescu

This paper focuses on the sluggish growth of world trade relative to income growth in recent years. The analysis uses an empirical strategy based on an error correction model to assess whether the global trade slowdown is structural or cyclical. An estimate of the relationship between trade and income in the past four decades reveals that the long-term trade elasticity rose sharply in the 1990s, but declined significantly in the 2000s even before the global financial crisis. These results suggest that trade is growing slowly not only because of slow growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but also because of a structural change in the trade-GDP relationship in recent years. The available evidence suggests that the explanation may lie in the slowing pace of international vertical specialization rather than increasing protection or the changing composition of trade and GDP.

Cyclical or Structural?

The Global Trade Slowdown

Sanjay Kathuria

Arti Grover

Viviana Maria Eugenia Perego

Pritam Banerjee

This report is part of a broader work program on shaping a more positive narrative on regional integration in South Asia. It is a follow-up to a recent flagship report published by the South Asia Region of the World Bank, A Glass Half Full: The Promise of Regional Trade in South Asia. E-commerce is dramatically changing the way goods and services are transacted nationally, regionally, and globally. It facilitates international trade by reducing the cost of distance and remoteness and can be more inclusive of underrepresented groups such as women, small businesses, and rural entrepreneurs. Intraregional trade in South Asia is still below its potential, and the region lags behind other parts of the world in activating the potential benefits from e-commerce. Adopting a novel yet practical approach, this report explores how e-commerce can be boosted to deepen intraregional trade in South Asia. It examines the main transacting models in the digital space and the channels through which e-commerce helps reduce transactions costs for firms and consumers. It considers the regulations, as well as the regulatory gaps, affecting private sector participation in e-commerce, focusing on data privacy, consumer protection, delivery, cybersecurity, market-access regulations, and digital payments. Finally, the report presents recommendations for regulatory reforms that could enhance e-trade, especially in a regional context and as a possible platform for greater global engagement by South Asian firms. The scale of these recommendations ranges from the modest, such as allowing cross-border payments and streamlining the customs regime, to the more ambitious, such as allowing the operation of regional e-commerce platforms and liberalizing related cross-border logistics services.

Unleashing E-Commerce for South Asian Integration

Maggie Xiaoyang Chen

World Bank. Development Research Group. Trade

Good Or Bad for Trade?

Regionalism in Standards

Pierre Sauvé

This text addresses two central questions: what impact can international trade rules on services have on the exercise of domestic regulatory sovereignty, and how can services negotiations be harnessed to promote and consolidate domestic policy reform across highly diverse sectors?.

Domestic Regulation and Service Trade Liberalization

Bernard M. Hoekman

Philip English

Publisher's description: Developing countries are increasingly confronted with the need to address trade policy related issues in international agreements, most prominently the World Trade Organization (WTO). New WTO negotiations on a broad range of subjects were launched in November 2001. Determining whether and how international trade agreements can support economic development is a major challenge. Stakeholders in developing countries must be informed on the issues and understand how their interests can be pursued through international cooperation. This handbook offers guidance on the design of trade policy reform, surveys key disciplines and the functioning of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and discusses numerous issues and options that confront developing countries in using international cooperation to improve domestic policy and obtain access to export markets. Many of the issues discussed are also relevant in the context of regional integration agreements. Separate sections of the handbook summarize what constitutes sound trade policy; the major aspects of the WTO from a development perspective; policy issues in the area of merchandise trade and the liberalization of international transactions in services; protection of intellectual property rights and economic development; new regulatory subjects that are emerging in the agenda of trade talks; and enhancing participation of developing countries in the global trading system.

A Handbook

Development, Trade, and the WTO

Corner-stone Or Pandora's Box?

National Treatment in the GATS

Mr.Arvind Subramanian

Ms.Prachi Mishra

This paper estimates the impact of China's exchange rate changes on exports of competitor countries in third markets, which we call the "spillover effect". We use recent theory to develop an identification strategy in which competition between China and its developing country competitors in specific products and destinations plays a key role. We exploit the variation - afforded by disaggregated trade data - across exporters, importers, product, and time to estimate this spillover effect. We find robust evidence of a statistically and quantitatively significant spillover effect. Our estimates suggest that a 10 percent appreciation of China's real exchange rate boosts on average a developing country's exports of a typical 4-digit HS product category to third markets by about 1.5-2 percent. The magnitude of the spillover effect varies systematically with product characteristics as implied by theory.

A Study of the Renminbi

Spillover Effects of Exchange Rates

Nadia Rocha

Deep trade agreements (DTAs) cover not just trade but additional policy areas, such as international flows of investment and labor and the protection of intellectual property rights and the environment. Their goal is integration beyond trade or deep integration. These agreements matter for economic development. Their rules influence how countries (and hence, the people and firms that live and operate within them) transact, invest, work, and ultimately, develop. Trade and investment regimes determine the extent of economic integration, competition rules affect economic efficiency, intellectual property rights matter for innovation, and environmental and labor rules contribute to environmental and social outcomes. This Handbook provides the tools and data needed to analyze these new dimensions of integration and to assess the content and consequences of DTAs. The Handbook and the accompanying database are the result of collaboration between experts in different policy areas from academia and other international organizations, including the International Trade Centre (ITC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and World Trade Organization (WTO).

Handbook of Deep Trade Agreements

Mr. Arvind Subramanian

Prachi Mishra

This paper estimates the impact of China''s exchange rate changes on exports of competitor countries in third markets, which we call the "spillover effect". We use recent theory to develop an identification strategy in which competition between China and its developing country competitors in specific products and destinations plays a key role. We exploit the variation - afforded by disaggregated trade data - across exporters, importers, product, and time to estimate this spillover effect. We find robust evidence of a statistically and quantitatively significant spillover effect. Our estimates suggest that a 10 percent appreciation of China''s real exchange rate boosts on average a developing country''s exports of a typical 4-digit HS product category to third markets by about 1.5-2 percent. The magnitude of the spillover effect varies systematically with product characteristics as implied by theory.

Aaditya Mattoo

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