2005年-世界发展银行全球_Global_Impacts_of_the_Doha_Scenarios_on_Poverty_38页_346kb

Summary of "Global Impacts of the Doha Scenarios on Poverty"

Core Content

This paper analyzes the potential effects of the WTO's Doha Round of trade negotiations on global poverty and income distribution, using the World Bank's global computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, LINKAGE. The study focuses on how trade liberalization, particularly in agriculture, textiles, and other manufacturing sectors, could influence real incomes and poverty levels across different regions and countries.

Main Points

1. Global Income Gains from Trade Reform

• A successful Doha Round could generate US$95 billion to US$126 billion per year in real global income gains by 2015, assuming no exemptions for sensitive agricultural products.
• Full merchandise trade reform would yield US$287 billion in global income gains in 2015 compared to the baseline scenario.
• High-income countries would receive the majority of these gains (about 70%), while developing countries would see a smaller share (around 30%).
• Developing countries have a relatively low elasticity of poverty reduction compared to economic growth, which limits the impact of trade reform on poverty alleviation.

2. Poverty Impact Analysis

• The number of people living below the US$1 per day poverty line is projected to decline by 32 million by 2015, a 5% reduction.
• Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are expected to have the largest concentrations of the poor.
• Unskilled wages in developing countries are expected to rise more than average incomes under most liberalization scenarios, but the overall poverty impact remains modest due to limited reform in developing countries.

3. Protection Patterns and Tariff Levels

• The global average tariff on agriculture and food is 16.7%, with little difference between high-income and developing countries.
• High-income Asian economies have the highest agricultural tariffs, while low-income countries like India, Vietnam, and parts of Sub-Saharan Africa also maintain high tariffs.
• Developing countries face significant trade barriers, with bound tariffs often much higher than applied tariffs, which limits the real liberalization effect.

4. Reform Scenarios

• Two benchmark scenarios are considered: the baseline and a complete merchandise trade reform.
• The baseline scenario incorporates precommitments such as the completion of the Uruguay Round, China's WTO accession, and the EU's eastward expansion.
• Doha scenarios involve modest tariff reductions, with the central Doha scenario leading to a 1.3 percentage point average cut in tariffs for high-income countries and a nearly 50% reduction in agricultural and food tariffs.
• The Doha-all scenario assumes equal tariff cuts for all countries, including LDCs, but the impact remains limited due to the large gap between bound and applied tariffs.

5. Decomposition of Trade Reform Impacts

• The gains from global trade reform are decomposed by region and sector.
• Agriculture and food account for 63% of the total gains, reflecting the high level of protection in these sectors.
• Developing countries benefit more from increased market access in high-income countries than from their own reforms.
• Industrial countries gain more from agricultural reform than from manufacturing liberalization.

6. Productivity and Growth Impacts

• The LINKAGE model is dynamic, but the growth effects of trade reform are modest.
• Productivity gains are influenced by sectoral openness, measured by the export-output ratio.
• A reduced-form relation is introduced to link sectoral productivity to changes in import prices relative to domestic prices.
• The elasticity of productivity to openness is assumed to be 0.4 for the global economy, with 0.5 for agriculture and 1 for manufacturing.
• Developing countries are expected to see a more significant productivity gain (from 0.8% to 2.0% of baseline income) compared to high-income countries (from 0.6% to 0.8%).

7. Key Findings

• Trade reform promotes growth, but its impact on global poverty is modest.
• Developing countries are unlikely to undertake substantial reforms due to the significant binding overhang in their tariff schedules.
• Global poverty reduction is limited by the low elasticity of poverty to income growth in certain regions.
• The use of global models is useful for assessing price changes and factor income effects, but they are not well-suited for analyzing household-level poverty.

Key Information

• Model Used: World Bank's LINKAGE (Version 6), based on GTAP dataset (Release 6.0).
• Base Year: 2001, with adjustments to reflect precommitments and tariff bindings.
• Poverty Line: US$1 per day.
• Global Poverty Reduction: 32 million people would be lifted out of poverty by 2015.
• Elasticity of Poverty to Income: Plays a critical role in estimating the impact of trade reforms on poverty.
• Doha Scenarios: Show that modest reforms are likely, especially in developing countries, due to high bound tariffs.

Conclusion

The paper concludes that while the Doha Round could generate significant global income gains, the impact on poverty is limited, especially in developing countries. The modest level of reform and the low elasticity of poverty to income growth in certain regions explain this outcome. The LINKAGE model provides a useful framework for estimating the welfare and productivity impacts of trade liberalization, but further micro-level analysis is needed to better understand household-level poverty effects.