If you have a relevant resource (books, papers, bulletins, etc.) you would like to see announced in this section, please forward a copy for review by the BRIDGES staff to Hugo Cameron, hcameron@ictsd.ch. Submissions of publications to ICTSD’s documentation centre would also be welcome (contact Matteo Rizzolli, mrizzolli@ictsd.ch).
SUBSIDIES AND THEIR POTENTIAL IMPACT ON THE MANAGEMENT OF THE ECOSYSTEMS OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC. By Gordon R. Munro and Ussif Rashid Sumaila, Fisheries Centre University of British Columbia, Canada, 2002. This paper provides both an estimate and assessment of subsidies in fisheries in the North Atlantic. The subsidies are estimated, on the basis of data taken from an OECD study and the Sea Around Us Project database, to be in the order of U.S.$2.0 to 2.5 billion per year. There is general agreement, to which we subscribe, that fisheries subsidies do great harm by exacerbating the problems arising from the "common pool" aspects of capture fisheries. Also, this paper argues that seemingly beneficial subsidies can, in fact, be highly negative in their impact. This paper was referenced in New Zealand’s 19 March 2002 submission to the WTO Committee on Trade and Environment, document number WT/CTE/W/204, searchable at http://docsonline.wto.org/gen_search.asp.
THE ROLE AND EFFECTIVENESS OF DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE. Produced by the World Bank, March 2002. This paper, released at the UN Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico in March 2002, surveys the changing roles and effectiveness of development assistance during the past 50 years, with particular attention to the past two decades and to the experience of the World Bank. It concludes that aid is increasingly a catalyst for change, making it possible for poor people to increase their incomes and to live longer, healthier and more productive lives. To access, visit http://econ.worldbank.org/view.php? type=5&id=13080.
"Issues in production, recycling and international trade: analysing the Chinese plastic sector using an optimal life cycle (OLC) model," by Anantha Kumar Duraiappah, Zhou Xin, and Pieter J. H. van Beukering, in Environment and Development Economics, 7 (1, 2002) : 47-74. This paper sets out to investigate if free trade in secondary material waste can support economic development and simultaneously reduce environmental degradation in a developing country and the conditions necessary for the trade to be permitted. In this study the focus is on trade in waste plastics in China. A life cycle model is formulated within an optimisation framework and solved by non-linear programming methods. Preliminary results suggest that trade in waste plastics is both economically and environmentally advantageous but under a number of stringent conditions.
FREE TRADE UNDER FIRE. By Douglas Irwin, Princeton University Press, due for release in April 2002. The book states the standard objections to free trade and goes through each in turn, explaining and questioning the theory, and then checking the empirical evidence. It concentrates on the new criticisms and the most recent evidence. It is reportedly up to date with the current literature on trade and incomes, trade and growth, trade and jobs, and other newly contentious issues.
"Everything but development : the Doha WTO outcome & process," in Third World Resurgence, 135/136 (Nov/Dec, 2001) : 11-56. This story reports on and analyses the Doha summit and its outcome. It focuses on what the author perceives to be manipulative tactics employed by the developed countries (with the full assistance of the WTO Secretariat) to secure a new round and the dishonest attempt to portray it as a "Development Agenda". The conclusion provides some tentative analyses of the implications of the Doha Ministerial outcome for developing countries and of the battles ahead.
"Sustainable development in an aging economy," by Tetsuo Ono and Yasuo Maeda, in Environment and Development Economics, 7 (1, 2002): 9-22. This paper analyses the effects of population aging on economic growth and the environment in a two-period overlapping generations model of growth, aging, and the environment. It shows that aging may be beneficial to economic growth and the environment under perfect annuitisation, while possibly harmful under imperfect annuitisation. Finally, it discusses the implications of the results for environmental policy in an aging economy.