Policy Papers ⁽³⁶⁾

Read paper (Forthcoming in Devashish Mitra and Rana Hasan, ed., volume to be published by North Holland). The paper recognizes the importance of promoting higher labor standards faster but rejects the idea of linking them with market access via the WTO instrumentality. It then considers alternative instruments such as ILO, socio-labels, education and trade liberalization.

Read paper (Published in the Economic and Political Weekly, March 4, 2000) The paper gives a critical assessment of the 2000-01 budget. It argues that there is no attempt by the government to use its first budget as the launch pad for a programme that would take India to its deserved status of a mature economy by the year 2010.

Read paper (UNCTAD and Center for International Development, G-24 Discussion Papers Series, No. 1, March 2000) Written prior to the WTO conference in Seattle, this paper identifies negotiating strategies and areas of benefits from a new multilateral round of trade negotiations for developing countries. The areas covered in the paper include trade liberalization, multilateral agreement on investment, dispute settlement, anti-dumping, and labor and environmental standards. Now that a new round has been launched as a result of the November 2001 WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha, insights offered in the paper are doubly relevant to developing countries.

Read paper (In Bhagwati, J., ed., The Next Negotiating Round: Examining the Agenda for Seattle, Proceedings of the Conference Held at Columbia University, July 23-24, 1999, 209-223, chapter 20). This paper discusses the desirability and feasibility of free trade in industrial and agricultural goods by a certain date. An inventory of the existing barriers in both developing and developed countries is taken and a case made that the scope for a mutually beneficial bargain that brings about free trade exists.

Read paper (In Bhagwati, J., ed., The Next Negotiating Round: Examining the Agenda for Seattle, Proceedings of the Conference held at Columbia University, July 23-24, 1999, 291-102, chapter 11) I argue that the inclusion of Intellectual property rights (IPR) into the WTO cannot be defended in the manner we defend trade liberalization. The latter is a win-win change whereas the former involves a redistribution of income from the poor to rich countries. I offer some simple economics of the extension of developed country IPR standards to developing countries.