IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/een/appswp/201632.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Multilateralism and Regionalism in the South Pacific: World Trade Organization and Regional Fora as Complementary Institutions for Trade Facilitation

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Pomfret

Abstract

As World Trade Organization (WTO) membership becomes almost universal, the Pacific island countries stand out as the largest group of outsiders. As the islands seek to replace reliance on preferential trading arrangements by competitive exports, market access and trade facilitation have become key policy concerns. In this context, WTO membership and regional or bilateral trade agreements are complementary institutions for increasing the potential success of new exports. The WTO sets out agreed principles for market access, and membership includes a dispute resolution process that provides redress against unjustified obstacles to exports, whilst trade facilitation in the sense of overcoming particular cost-raising obstacles to trade is better delivered by regional and bilateral agreements. The argument is supported by evidence from Pacific and other small island economies.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Pomfret, 2016. "Multilateralism and Regionalism in the South Pacific: World Trade Organization and Regional Fora as Complementary Institutions for Trade Facilitation," Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies 201632, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    • Handle: RePEc:een:appswp:201632
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/app5.144/full
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yann Duval, 2008. "Trade Facilitation beyond the Doha round of negotiations," STUDIES IN TRADE AND INVESTMENT, in: Trade Facilitation Beyond the Multilateral Trade Negotiations: Regional Practices, Customs, Valuation and Other Emerging Issues, pages 1-25, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
    2. Nora Neufeld, 2014. "Trade Facilitation Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements: Traits and Trends," Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy (JICEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 5(02), pages 1-28.
    3. Yann Duval, 2007. "Trade Facilitation beyond the Doha Round of Negotiations," ARTNeT Working Papers 50, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
    4. Wesley Morgan, 2014. "Trade Negotiations and Regional Economic Integration in the Pacific Islands Forum," Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(2), pages 325-336, May.
    5. Pomfret, Richard, 2001. "The Economics of Regional Trading Arrangements," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199248872.
    6. Neufeld, Nora, 2014. "Trade facilitation provisions in regional trade agreements traits and trends," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2014-01, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
    7. Richard Pomfret, 2016. "International Trade:Theory, Evidence and Policy," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 9816, February.
    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. Rerekura Teaurere & Siulua Tokilupe Latu & Roxane de Waegh & Mark Orams & Michael Lück, 2023. "Foreign aid, human agency, and self‐reliance in the Pacific: Lessons from the pandemic," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 41(S2), December.

    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. Carballo, Jerónimo & Schaur, Georg & Graziano, Alejandro & Volpe Martincus, Christian, 2016. "Transit Trade," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 7688, Inter-American Development Bank.
    2. Christian Volpe Martincus, 2016. "Out of the Border Labyrinth: An Assessment of Trade Facilitation Initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean," IDB Publications (Books), Inter-American Development Bank, number 96856, February.
    3. Jerónimo Carballo & Alejandro G. Graziano & Georg Schaur & Christian Volpe Martincus, 2024. "The Effects of Transit Systems on International Trade," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 106(4), pages 1083-1098, July.
    4. Jerónimo Carballo & Georg Schaur & Alejandro Graziano & Christian Volpe Martincus, 2016. "Transit Trade," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 94658, Inter-American Development Bank.
    5. Thomas Orliac, 2012. "The economics of trade facilitation [L'économie de la facilitation des échanges]," SciencePo Working papers Main tel-03681980, HAL.
    6. Syed Saifuddin Hossain & Uttam Deb & Muhammed Al Amin, 2010. "The Impact of Information Technology in Trade Facilitation on Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in Bangladesh," STUDIES IN TRADE AND INVESTMENT, in: Florian A. Alburo & Yann Duval (ed.), Studies in Trade and Investment: The Development Impact of Information Technology in Trade Facilitation, volume 69, chapter 5, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
    7. De Prabir, 2010. "Transit and Trade Barriers in South Asia: Multilateral Obligations and Development Perspective," The Law and Development Review, De Gruyter, vol. 3(2), pages 271-305, May.
    8. Debashis CHAKRABORTY & Sacchidananda MUKHERJEE, 2016. "How Trade Facilitation Measures influence Export Orientation? Empirical Estimates with Logistics Performance Index Data," Journal of Economics Library, KSP Journals, vol. 3(4), pages 554-569, December.
    9. Volpe Martincus, Christian, 2016. "Out of the Border Labyrinth: An Assessment of Trade Facilitation Initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean," IDB Publications (Books), Inter-American Development Bank, number 7994.
    10. Russell Hillberry & Carlos Zurita, 2022. "Commitment behaviour in the World Trade Organization's Trade Facilitation Agreement," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(1), pages 36-75, January.
    11. Beverelli, Cosimo & Neumueller, Simon & Teh, Robert, 2015. "Export Diversification Effects of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 293-310.
    12. Nguyen, Cuong, 2013. "Poverty, Inequality and Trade Facilitation in Low and Middle Income Countries," MPRA Paper 50312, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. repec:wsr:wpaper:y:2015:i:137 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Beverelli, Cosimo & Neumüller, Simon & Teh, Robert, 2014. "A new look at the extensive trade margin effects of trade facilitation," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2014-16, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
    15. Pomfret, Richard, 2005. "Trade policies in Central Asia after EU enlargement and before Russian WTO accession: Regionalism and integration into the world economy," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 32-58, March.
    16. Richard Pomfret & Uwe Kaufmann & Christopher Findlay, 2010. "Are Preferential Tariffs Utilized? Evidence from Australian Imports, 2000-9," School of Economics and Public Policy Working Papers 2010-13, University of Adelaide, School of Economics and Public Policy.
    17. Lucian Cernat, 2001. "ASSESSING REGIONAL TRADE ARRANGEMENTS: ARE SOUTH–SOUTH RTAs MORE TRADE DIVERTING?," International Trade 0109001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Chakraborty, Debashis & Maheshwari, Sourabh & Parashar, Sushil, 2018. "Recent US-China Tariff War: Opportunities for Indian Pharmaceutical Exports?," MPRA Paper 89643, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Anderson, Kym, 2004. "The Challenge of Reducing Subsidies and Trade Barriers," CEPR Discussion Papers 4592, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Scott L. Baier & Jeffrey H. Bergstrand, 2004. "Trade agreements and trade flows: Estimating the effect of free trade agreements on trade flows with an application to the European Union," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 214, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    21. Prabir De & Abdur Rob Khan & Sachin Chaturvedi, 2008. "Transit and Trade Barriers in Eastern South Asia: A Review of the Transit Regime and Performance of Strategic Border-Crossings," Working Papers 5608, Asia-Pacific Research and Training Network on Trade (ARTNeT), an initiative of UNESCAP and IDRC, Canada..

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Pacific islands; trade facilitation; WTO;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:een:appswp:201632. 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: Sung Lee (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/asanuau.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.