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3554 results in International business

Page 154 of 178

  • 17 - The environmental impact of US green box subsidies

  • from PART IV - Green box subsidies and the environment
  • Edited by Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Christophe Bellmann, Jonathan Hepburn
  • Book:
    Agricultural Subsidies in the WTO Green Box
    Published online:
    03 May 2010
    Print publication:
    03 December 2009, pp 496-529

  • Summary

    Introduction

    This is an effort to focus not on the trade-related features of US green box payments, but on their environmental effects. It is easy to assume that they are benign, since many environmental programs are notified as green box measures. However a closer investigation reveals that this may not always be the case. Even though they are assumed to have no production-enhancing features, some do – and increased production can be harmful to the environment since US agriculture at scale almost always involves cropping systems that deplete soil and water resources and release carbon. Other US green box measures can be equally disruptive to the environment. “Emergency” natural disaster payments can keep producers on marginal lands in business if the payments are as annual as some of the crops they grow. Furthermore environmental programs with the best intentions can reward producers for doing what they would do in any case, even though it is not better than what is normal for the region or the crop.

    There are many safeguards in place to ensure that programs are effective and achieve their objectives, but what happens to programs based on market mechanisms when the market rewards poor environmental performance? Finally, what alternatives might be suggested to more closely align green box programs with their intended use? These and other relevant issues are discussed below.

    Background

    The green box is not green

    The “green box” is of course not “green” in the environmental sense.

  • 1 - Overview

  • Edited by Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Christophe Bellmann, Jonathan Hepburn
  • Book:
    Agricultural Subsidies in the WTO Green Box
    Published online:
    03 May 2010
    Print publication:
    03 December 2009, pp 1-16

  • Summary

    In 1957, at the twelfth session of the GATT Contracting Parties, held at Ministerial level, a Panel of Experts, chaired by Professor Gottfried Haberler, was established to review trends in international trade. The Panel was asked to examine the effect of agricultural protectionism, fluctuating commodity prices and the failure of export earnings to keep pace with import demand in developing countries. The 1958 Haberler Report stressed the importance of minimising the effect of agriculture subsidies on competitiveness, and recommended replacing price support by direct supplementary payments not linked with production, anticipating discussion on green box subsidies.

    Three decades later, the simple notion of a shift from price support to producer support was to become the backbone of an ambitious reform of the global agriculture system. As Stancanelli notes, in the 1980s, high administered prices paid to agriculture in industrialised countries led to self-sufficiency and the generation of large surpluses, which were channelled to the world market by means of export subsidies. As a consequence, the fiscal cost of protective measures increased, both through lower receipts from import duties and higher expenditure. This budgetary burden was further compounded by direct subsidies and the cost of storing non-export surpluses.

    At the global level, after two successive oil crises in 1973 and 1979, the global economy had entered a cycle of stagnation and recession, combined with mounting foreign debt in the developing world.

  • 3 - Doha Round negotiations on the green box and beyond

  • from PART I - The recent evolution of agricultural trade policy reform
  • Edited by Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Christophe Bellmann, Jonathan Hepburn
  • Book:
    Agricultural Subsidies in the WTO Green Box
    Published online:
    03 May 2010
    Print publication:
    03 December 2009, pp 36-69

  • Summary

    Introduction

    The WTO Doha Round negotiations on green box subsidies were widely seen as having ‘stabilised’ by mid-2008, meaning that, after a long period of fine-tuning, the compromise language proposed by the chair was being viewed by many as a realistic basis for agreement. While some countries may still have specific concerns with particular elements, a broad consensus on the modifications to be made had emerged.

    For much of 2007 and 2008, negotiators had focused primarily on a limited number of issues, with particular attention being devoted to defining the exceptional circumstances under which governments might be allowed to update the ‘fixed and unchanging’ base periods they use to determine the amount of direct payments they provide to their producers. However, as recently as 2006, members were concerned about a far wider array of issues, many of which have not found reflection in the likely Doha outcome. The draft ‘modalities’ text circulated that year by the chair of the agriculture negotiations bears witness to the heterogeneity of demands for reform that were on the table. While many negotiators admit that their country has decided to drop some of these proposals in the interests of obtaining a Doha Round agreement, there is reason to believe that many of the underlying concerns remain.

    Further back still, a wide range of ideas, concerns and proposals were discussed by members.

  • 12 - Use of green box measures by developing countries: an assessment

  • from PART III - Green box subsidies and developing countries
  • Edited by Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Christophe Bellmann, Jonathan Hepburn
  • Book:
    Agricultural Subsidies in the WTO Green Box
    Published online:
    03 May 2010
    Print publication:
    03 December 2009, pp 369-398

  • Summary

    Disciplining farm subsidies has been one of the main objectives of the multilateral trading system ever since agriculture was included in the negotiating mandate for the Uruguay Round negotiations in 1986. The decision to extend multilateral trade rules to the agricultural sector reflected the desire of the GATT contracting parties to rein in the market-distorting subsidies. The negotiating mandate for the Uruguay Round was thus adopted to improve “the competitive environment by increasing discipline on the use of all direct and indirect subsidies” (emphasis added). However, while agreeing to the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), the eventual outcome of the Uruguay Round negotiations on agriculture, the GATT contracting parties adopted a more nuanced approach to the disciplining of farm subsidies.

    While introducing the discipline on farm subsidies, the AoA adopted a three-tiered structure in respect of the production-related subsidies, the so-called domestic support. The discipline was ostensibly based on the perceived distortions caused by each of the three sets of subsidies. Thus, subsidies that directly influenced prices and production, including price support measures and input subsidies, were reined in. These subsidies had to be reduced if they exceeded the threshold, identified as the de minimis level, and could not exceed the de minimis level if the actual spending was below this threshold. However, subsidies that “have no, or at most minimal, trade-distorting effects or effects on production” were not subjected to any discipline.

  • 2 - The historical context of the green box

  • from PART I - The recent evolution of agricultural trade policy reform
  • Edited by Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Christophe Bellmann, Jonathan Hepburn
  • Book:
    Agricultural Subsidies in the WTO Green Box
    Published online:
    03 May 2010
    Print publication:
    03 December 2009, pp 19-35

  • Summary

    Some history

    The International Economy

    The long-term growth and composition of international trade depends, at the economic level, upon changes in demand and, ultimately, production patterns, and at the political level, on the interaction of conflicts of interest and cooperative efforts among different national states and regions. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), from its inception after the Second World War, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), from 1994 onwards, are clear examples of the struggle to reign over these conflicts of interest and, at the same time, to adapt multilateral institutions to the changing patterns of the international economy. Agriculture by itself is an ideal field of research to test these changes in demand and the political interaction already referred to.

    From an economic point of view, for more than 60 years after the crisis of 1929, farming production was affected by decreasing income elasticity of demand, meaning that its share in total consumption diminished at the same time as income grew. This process, which can be called the autonomous trend of demand, led to changes in world relative prices (terms of trade) between agriculture and manufactured goods.

    The adjustment in supply that should have followed as a result of this change was nevertheless not automatic, depending on the commercial policies followed at the national level.

Agricultural Subsidies in the WTO Green Box
  • Ensuring Coherence with Sustainable Development Goals
  • Edited by Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Christophe Bellmann, Jonathan Hepburn
  • Published online:
    03 May 2010
    Print publication:
    03 December 2009
  • Do the World Trade Organization's rules on 'green box' farm subsidies allow both rich and poor countries to achieve important goals such as food security, or do they worsen poverty, distort trade and harm the environment? Current WTO requirements set no ceiling on the amount of green box subsidies that governments can provide, on the basis that these payments cause only minimal trade distortion. Governments are thus increasingly shifting their subsidy spending into this category, as they come under pressure to reduce subsidies that are more directly linked to production. However, growing evidence nonetheless suggests that green box payments can affect production and trade, harm farmers in developing countries and cause environmental damage. By bringing together new research and critical thinking, this book examines the relationship between green box subsidies and the achievement of sustainable development goals, and explores options for future reform.

  • 16 - The environmental impact of EU green box subsidies

  • from PART IV - Green box subsidies and the environment
  • Edited by Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Christophe Bellmann, Jonathan Hepburn
  • Book:
    Agricultural Subsidies in the WTO Green Box
    Published online:
    03 May 2010
    Print publication:
    03 December 2009, pp 468-495

  • Summary

    Introduction

    With over €372 billion to be spent over the 2007 to 2013 budget period on agricultural subsidies in the European Union (EU), these subsidies have become a key determinant of farmers' incomes, frequently accounting for over one-half of European farmers' annual earnings, and thus of land use decisions. The way in which these subsidies have been allocated has therefore shaped land use patterns across the EU and consequently had a resounding impact on wildlife and the environment in rural areas. At the same time, these subsidies have been accused of heavily distorting world trade to the detriment of farmers in developing countries and have become one of the principal stumbling blocks in the Doha Round of negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

    The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) underwent significant reform in 2003. This reform was driven by negotiations at the WTO and, to a lesser extent, by the environmental impacts of the CAP. It resulted in a shift of CAP spend from traditional market and product support measures to green-box-compliant schemes, namely, subsidies that are considered to be non-trade-distorting. It also saw the introduction of minimum environmental standards for all farmers in receipt of subsidies, known as cross-compliance, and the strengthening of environmental schemes.

    These trends are likely to continue with the ongoing “health check” of the Common Agricultural Policy as well as the post-2013 EU budget review, which provides an opportunity for substantial reform.

  • 11 - Agricultural subsidies in the WTO green box: opportunities and challenges for developing countries

  • from PART III - Green box subsidies and developing countries
  • Edited by Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Christophe Bellmann, Jonathan Hepburn
  • Book:
    Agricultural Subsidies in the WTO Green Box
    Published online:
    03 May 2010
    Print publication:
    03 December 2009, pp 329-368

  • Summary

    11 years of green box usage

    Perhaps because green box subsidies are not subject to commitments in the AoA, relatively few studies have analysed expenditure in this area. It is therefore not easy to find studies compiling notified expenditure and comparing situations among green box users. Although the WTO (2000) Secretariat background paper is one exception, this study has not subsequently been updated.

    Moreover, the green box comprises different programme types and is divided into several categories, making it even harder to offer comparisons between them. Some existing analyses of green box categories focus on decoupled income support and direct payments to producers. The work of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is particularly worthy of mention in this respect.

    This section is based on a compilation of green box notifications for a selected number of developed and developing countries. The first part briefly introduces subsidy disciplines in the AoA and looks at traditional green box policies. The subsequent sections are supported by notifications from 1995 onwards.

    Typical green box policies: legal arguments and interpretations

    The AoA, established in the Uruguay Round, brought disciplines for the use of agricultural subsidies (domestic support and export subsidies) into the multilateral trading system for the first time, establishing limitations and reduction commitments. The agricultural subsidies were classified into three categories:

  • Amber box: domestic support measures that can cause distortion and for this reason are subject to reduction commitments based on the total aggregate measurement of support (AMS). The concept of de minimis must also be mentioned here: this represents a minimum subsidy allowance, which is 5 per cent of the value of production for developed countries and 10 per cent for developing countries.

  • […]

  • 5 - Farm policy reform in the United States: past progress and future direction

  • from PART I - The recent evolution of agricultural trade policy reform
  • Edited by Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Christophe Bellmann, Jonathan Hepburn
  • Book:
    Agricultural Subsidies in the WTO Green Box
    Published online:
    03 May 2010
    Print publication:
    03 December 2009, pp 86-120

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Toward the end of its first decade, a chaotic environment shaped US farm policies for the twenty-first century. Exchange rates had realigned significantly over the past decade, yet they remained skewed globally compared to levels that might be necessary for sustainable balanced trade. There had been five years of disastrous expansion of armed conflict in the Middle East, with collateral effects on world oil prices. No one could confidently disentangle proximate short-term from longer-term supply and demand determinants to say for certain where oil prices might settle. The occurrence of global warming was broadly recognized even within resistant circles in the US, but what was to be done about it? The call for greater energy self-sufficiency (called “security”, of course) was flying high politically, but was it a viable economic strategy? Questions arose in these circumstances about the traditional assumptions in agricultural policy deliberations that farm prices will often be low and that developed-country subsidies will drive them down further.

    In this chaotic environment, the US Congress wrote a new farm bill in 2008. The prospect of whether or not there would be a multilateral Doha Round WTO agreement simmered in the background, but the domestic farm bill debate paid little attention to multilateral rules or constraints. Bioenergy enthusiasm (and subsidies) fuelled market optimism. Crop prices were relatively high after 2005, as they were briefly in 1995 to 1996, then shot up in 2008, with projections for continuation of high prices through the decade.

  • 6 - Agricultural trade policy reform in Japan

  • from PART I - The recent evolution of agricultural trade policy reform
  • Edited by Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Christophe Bellmann, Jonathan Hepburn
  • Book:
    Agricultural Subsidies in the WTO Green Box
    Published online:
    03 May 2010
    Print publication:
    03 December 2009, pp 121-134

  • Summary

    Introduction

    The Japanese economy is under restructuring to cope with globalization. Agriculture is not exempt from this process. Rather, agricultural reform should be encouraged because it has lagged behind other sectors that have been liberalized relying on international trade. Japanese agriculture, in particular rice farming, has been protected by border measures and domestic price supports, but Japan is one of the largest agricultural importers in the world. Despite the high level of agricultural protection in Japan, the Japanese food self-sufficiency ratio declined to 39 per cent on a calorie basis in 2006. It appears that the protection policy has played no role in strengthening Japanese agriculture and has impeded inter-sectoral adjustment.

    According to the Basic Law on Food, Agriculture and Rural Area established in 1999, which replaced the 1961 Agricultural Basic Law, the Japanese Government revised the New Basic Plan of Food, Agriculture and Rural Areas in March 2005. This indicates guidelines for agricultural policies 10 years from now. The plan contains, among other things, the target level for Japan's food self-sufficiency ratio, policies for structural reform, stabilization schemes for agricultural income and ideas for promoting effective use of agricultural land.

    In 2007, a new agricultural policy scheme was launched in Japan to introduce a direct payment for land-extensive farming under the Farm Management Stabilization Programme. This aims to guarantee large-scale farmers a certain level of income, regardless of the commodities produced.

  • 23 - Towards a green box subsidy regime that promotes sustainable development: strategies for achieving change

  • from PART V - Looking forward: how can change take place?
  • Edited by Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Christophe Bellmann, Jonathan Hepburn
  • Book:
    Agricultural Subsidies in the WTO Green Box
    Published online:
    03 May 2010
    Print publication:
    03 December 2009, pp 633-646

  • Summary

    Introduction

    The objective of this chapter is to provide trade negotiators and policy-makers with insights into strategies that could be pursued to encourage the reform of green box subsidies, including through trade negotiations and litigation, in order to promote a subsidy regime that is more supportive of sustainable development goals. The analysis is based on an understanding of the political economy of agricultural trade policy-making and seeks to make sense of green box reform within the context of subsidy reform more generally.

    Before engaging in this discussion, however, it must be recognized that although developing countries have the option of a wide array of domestic support exemptions in the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) as it stands now (paragraph 6.2 and higher de minimis, as well as green box), many countries cannot afford the high costs of agriculture support and do not have the necessary expertise to implement many of these programmes. It should also be noted that many developing countries, particularly those in the earlier development stages, discriminate against their own agriculture sectors. Besides export taxation – justified in many developing countries by limited resources for tax collection – industrial policies, macroeconomic factors and underinvestment in rural infrastructure, research and extension services continue to reflect an anti-agricultural bias. Concerns about food supply for poor consumers also lead governments to intervene in agricultural markets, bringing domestic prices down below international levels. This discrimination against agricultural producers can impair development efforts.

  • 3 - Finance and Labor: Perspectives on Risk, Inequality, and Democracy

  • Edited by Clair Brown, University of California, Berkeley, Barry J. Eichengreen, University of California, Berkeley, Michael Reich, University of California, Berkeley
  • Book:
    Labor in the Era of Globalization
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    23 November 2009, pp 94-150

  • Summary

    We live in an era of financialization. Since 1980, capital markets have expanded around the world; capital shuttles the globe instantaneously. Shareholder concerns drive executive decision making and compensation, and the fluctuations of stock markets are a source of public anxiety. So are the financial scandals that have regularly occurred in recent years: junk bonds in the 1980s, lax accounting and stock manipulation in the early 2000s, and debt securitization today.

    We also live in an era of rising income inequality and employment risk. The gaps between top and bottom incomes and between top and middle incomes have widened since 1980. Greater risk takes various forms, such as wage and employment volatility and the shift of responsibility from employers to employees for pensions and, in the United States, health insurance.

    There is an enormous literature on financial development and another on inequality; however, relatively few studies consider the intersection of these phenomena. Standard explanations for rising inequality – that is, skill-biased technological change and trade – account for only 30 percent of the variation in aggregate inequality. What else matters? We argue here that an omitted factor is financial development. This chapter explores the relationship between financial markets and labor markets along three dimensions: contemporary, historical, and comparative. For the world's industrialized nations, we find that financial development waxes and wanes in line with top income shares.

  • 13 - Local Labor-Market Adaptation to Increased Immigration

  • Edited by Clair Brown, University of California, Berkeley, Barry J. Eichengreen, University of California, Berkeley, Michael Reich, University of California, Berkeley
  • Book:
    Labor in the Era of Globalization
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    23 November 2009, pp 414-444

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    The United States is once again becoming a country of immigrants. Immigrant arrivals – currently more than one million people per year – now account for approximately 40 percent of population growth. The effects of these inflows are controversial, in part because of their sheer size and in part because of their composition. Roughly one third of new arrivals are undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America who have low education and limited English skills (Passel 2005). Although another quarter of immigrants – from countries such as India and China – are relatively skilled, critics of current policy often emphasize the presumed negative effects of lower-skilled immigration on the labor-market opportunities of less-skilled natives (Borjas 1999).

    Immigration is a particular concern in the nation's largest cities, where most immigrants live. Among the 100 largest Primary Metropolitan Statistical Areas (PMSAs) in the 2000 Census, for example, 18.7 percent of people ages sixteen to sixty-five were immigrants – substantially above the share in the nation as a whole. Even among large cities, there is wide variation in the share of immigrants in the local population. Immigrants comprise more than 40 percent of the working-age population in Los Angeles and New York but less than 10 percent in Philadelphia and Detroit. This remarkable heterogeneity raises an important question: How do local labor markets in high-impact cities adapt to the presence of large numbers of immigrants?

  • 8 - Symphony Musicians and Symphony Orchestras

  • Edited by Clair Brown, University of California, Berkeley, Barry J. Eichengreen, University of California, Berkeley, Michael Reich, University of California, Berkeley
  • Book:
    Labor in the Era of Globalization
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    23 November 2009, pp 264-294

  • Summary

    By the standards applied to profit-seeking organizations, symphony orchestras have been a declining industry in the United States over the past two decades. Performance (i.e., earned) revenues have fallen short of performance expenses by ever-increasing amounts, and attendance per concert is declining for virtually all types of concerts, despite steady increases in the proportion of the population with a college education (i.e., the demographic most likely to attend concerts). Like universities, symphony orchestras and other performing-arts organizations have almost always required contributed support and investment income from endowments to offset the gap between performance revenues and expenses. But in the past twenty years, there have been indications that these traditional sources of nonperformance income often fail to achieve overall financial balance for orchestras.

    Symphony orchestras are also one of the last bastions of union representation in the United States. The working conditions of musicians in all but two of the top sixty orchestras are governed by collective-bargaining agreements, and the two exceptions are labor cooperatives. This chapter investigates the relationship between these two facts: the extent to which the economic difficulties faced by symphony orchestras reflect collectively bargained wage increases and work rules. The setting also provides an opportunity to address much broader questions, including the nature of collective bargaining when the employer is a nonprofit organization and the role of unions in declining industries.

  • 9 - Wage Effects of Works Councils and Collective Agreements in Germany

  • Edited by Clair Brown, University of California, Berkeley, Barry J. Eichengreen, University of California, Berkeley, Michael Reich, University of California, Berkeley
  • Book:
    Labor in the Era of Globalization
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    23 November 2009, pp 295-316

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    The effects of German industrial-relations institutions on wages have been analyzed in several studies. Some investigations focus on the impact of collective agreements on wages, whereas other studies – considering the specific German institutional setting – concentrate on the wage effects of works councils. The interactive role of both institutions in the wage-determination process is frequently neglected. In the framework of a binding collective contract, which resolves or, at least, attenuates distributional conflicts, works councils on the one hand could be more willing to invest in trust and cooperation and less inclined to use their rights to counteract decisions of management with the goals of redistributing economic rents and raising wages. On the other hand, works councils – in conjunction with the union that negotiated the collective contract – could mutually strengthen their respective bargaining power and exert a stronger impact on wages.

    In this chapter, we analyze the nexus of wages and industrial-relations institutions – specifically, collective contracts and works councils. In a first step, we concentrate on two periods, 2000/2001 and 2004/2005, and estimate the effects of works councils on wages for firms covered and not covered by a collective contract using cross-sectional firm data. Because the Works Constitution Act was reformed in 2001 (effective in 2002) – with the political goals to facilitate the creation of works councils, strengthen the access of unions to firms, and expand the rights of works councils – we analyze whether the wage effects of works councils differ between the two periods.

Page 154 of 178