IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/ecjilt/55900.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Special and Differential Treatment in the GATT: A Pyrrhic Victory for Developing Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Christie, Andrew

Abstract

Preferential measures for developing countries implemented within the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade failed to achieve their purported goal of facilitating economic development; this failure was due to their weak theoretical underpinnings and poor policy design. Not only were the demands developing countries made for discriminatory preferences largely ineffectual, their demands for preferential treatment, together with their forgoing full participation in the multilateral trading system, fundamentally reduced the obligation of developed countries to consider the interests of developing countries in future negotiation rounds. Thus the winning of preferences was rendered a pyrrhic victory for developing countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Christie, Andrew, 2009. "Special and Differential Treatment in the GATT: A Pyrrhic Victory for Developing Countries," Estey Centre Journal of International Law and Trade Policy, Estey Centre for Law and Economics in International Trade, vol. 10(2), pages 1-22.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:ecjilt:55900
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.55900
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/55900/files/christie10-2.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.55900?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wilkinson, Rorden & Scott, James, 2008. "Developing country participation in the GATT: a reassessment," World Trade Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(3), pages 473-510, July.
    2. Srinivasan, T. N., 2005. "Nondiscrimination in GATT/WTO: was there anything to begin with and is there anything left?," World Trade Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(1), pages 69-95, March.
    3. Anne O. Krueger, 1996. "The Political Economy of Trade Protection," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number krue96-2.
    4. Prebisch, Raúl, 1950. "The economic development of Latin America and its principal problems," Sede de la CEPAL en Santiago (Estudios e Investigaciones) 29973, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    5. Joseph Francois & Bernard Hoekman & Miriam Manchin, 2006. "Preference Erosion and Multilateral Trade Liberalization," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 20(2), pages 197-216.
    6. Ahmad, Jaleel, 1985. "Prospects of trade liberalization between the developed and the developing countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 13(9), pages 1077-1086, September.
    7. André Sapir, 1981. "Trade benefits under the EEC generalized system of preferences," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/8290, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    8. Ozden, Caglar & Reinhardt, Eric, 2005. "The perversity of preferences: GSP and developing country trade policies, 1976-2000," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 1-21, October.
    9. Baldwin, R E & Murray, Tracy, 1977. "MFN Tariff Reductions and Developing Country Trade Benefits under the GSP," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 87(345), pages 30-46, March.
    10. Wolf, Martin, 1987. "Differential and More Favorable Treatment of Developing Countries and the International Trading System," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 1(4), pages 647-668, September.
    11. Anonymous, 1958. "General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(2), pages 261-263, April.
    12. Kimberly Ann Elliott, 1997. "Corruption and the Global Economy," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 12, April.
    13. Patrick A. Messerlin, 2006. "Enlarging the Vision for Trade Policy Space: Special and Differentiated Treatment and Infant Industry Issues," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(10), pages 1395-1407, October.
    14. E. Paul Durrenberger, 2005. "Labour," Chapters, in: James G. Carrier (ed.), A Handbook of Economic Anthropology, chapter 8, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. Anonymous, 1958. "General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(3), pages 417-418, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Omphemetse S. Sibanda Sr., 2015. "Towards a Revised GATT/WTO Special and Differential Treatment Regime for Least Developed and Developing Countries," Foreign Trade Review, , vol. 50(1), pages 31-40, February.
    2. Ana Luiza Cortez & Mehmet Arda, 2014. "Global trade rules for supporting development in the post-2015 era," CDP Background Papers 019, United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ingo Borchert, 2009. "Trade diversion under selective preferential market access," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 42(4), pages 1390-1410, November.
    2. Persson, Maria, 2012. "From trade preferences to trade facilitation: Taking stock of the issues," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 6, pages 1-33.
    3. Mary Amiti & John Romalis, 2007. "Will the Doha Round Lead to Preference Erosion?," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 54(2), pages 338-384, June.
    4. Persson, Maria & Wilhelmsson, Fredrik, 2006. "Assessing the Effects of EU Trade Preferences for Developing Countries," Working Papers 2006:4, Lund University, Department of Economics, revised 26 Jun 2006.
    5. Agostino, Maria Rosaria & Aiello, Francesco & Cardamone, Paola, 2007. "Analyzing the Impact of Trade Preferences in Gravity Models. Does Aggregation Matter?," Working Papers 7294, TRADEAG - Agricultural Trade Agreements.
    6. Kym Anderson, 2009. "Krueger/Schiff/Valdes Revisited: Agricultural Price and Trade Policy Reform in Developing Countries since the 1980s," School of Economics and Public Policy Working Papers 2009-22, University of Adelaide, School of Economics and Public Policy.
    7. Anderson, Kym, 2009. "Krueger/Schiff/Valdés Revisited: Agricultural Price and Trade Policy Reform in Developing Countries since 1960," CEPR Discussion Papers 7601, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Anderson, Kym & Martin, Will & van der Mensbrugghe, Dominique, 2013. "Estimating Effects of Price-Distorting Policies Using Alternative Distortions Databases," Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, in: Peter B. Dixon & Dale Jorgenson (ed.), Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 877-931, Elsevier.
    9. Trofimov, Ivan D., 2017. "International policy entrepreneurship and production of international public goods: the case of multilateral trade regime," MPRA Paper 80819, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Kym Anderson, 2020. "Trade Protectionism In Australia: Its Growth And Dismantling," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(5), pages 1044-1067, December.
    11. Finger, Michael J. & Dhar, Sumana, 1992. "Do rules control power? GATT articles and arrangements in the Uruguay Round," Policy Research Working Paper Series 818, The World Bank.
    12. Lyu, Jianxing & Prehn, Soren & Zhang, Yanjie & Glauben, Thomas & Zeng, Yinchu, 2021. "Trade creation, political sensitivity and product exclusions: the political economy of agriculture protection in China’s FTAs," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 63(03), January.
    13. Lloyd, P. J., 1999. "Symposium: Economic dynamics and the new millennium: The architecture of the multilateral organizations," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 211-236.
    14. Beckman, Jayson & Dyck, John & Heerman, Kari, 2017. "The Global Landscape of Agricultural Trade, 1995-2014," Economic Information Bulletin 265270, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    15. Robert Wolfe, 2021. "Yours is bigger than mine! Could an index like the Producer Subsidy Equivalent help in understanding the comparative incidence of industrial subsidies?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(2), pages 328-345, February.
    16. Anderson, Kym & Croser, Johanna L. & Sandri, Damiano & Valenzuela, Ernesto, 2009. "Agricultural Distortion Patterns Since the 1950s: What Needs Explaining?," Agricultural Distortions Working Paper Series 50305, World Bank.
    17. Kym Anderson & Gordon Rausser & Johan Swinnen, 2013. "Political Economy of Public Policies: Insights from Distortions to Agricultural and Food Markets," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(2), pages 423-477, June.
    18. Lars Brink, 2009. "WTO Constraints on Domestic Support in Agriculture: Past and Future," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 57(1), pages 1-21, March.
    19. David Laborde & Will Martin, 2012. "Agricultural Trade: What Matters in the Doha Round?," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 265-283, August.
    20. Keck, Alexander & Lendle, Andreas, 2012. "New evidence on preference utilization," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2012-12, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:ecjilt:55900. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esteyca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.