Illicit Trade and Smuggling

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Kemp ◽  
Rebecca Galemba
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Trade Policies ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
State Regulations ◽  
Illicit Trade ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Illicit Markets ◽  
Prohibition Regimes ◽  
Governance Arrangements

In this article, illicit trade and smuggling refer to the unauthorized sale, purchase, exchange, or transport of goods, persons, animals, or technology across borders. Illicit trade across borders may entail goods considered dangerous, those that circumvent prohibitions in one or both countries, or mundane items and population movements that evade controls or regulations. However, smuggled goods may be produced, consumed, or recirculated legally, informally, or illegally. Lacking a universal, global set of norms and regulations across time, much of what is considered to be illicit trade may be legal in one place while prohibited in another, or tolerated in one time and banned in another. The forms smuggling takes and its profitability are shaped by regulations, their inconsistent application, and their differences across different regulatory spheres. Illicit trade often dovetails with legal global trade; forms of integration from below may proceed alongside, compete with, resist, or even complement and foster legal global economic flows. Power relations, within countries and wielded by more powerful nations with influence to shape trade agreements, trade policies, financial norms, and global prohibition regimes, normalize the kinds of international trade considered legal and beneficial and foster the criminalization of competing alternatives. Yet, such norms are not necessarily widely shared or consistently applied and implemented. Individuals engaging in forms of illicit trade and smuggling may not share the perspective of states or international organizations regarding the morality and legitimacy of their actions. Scholars contend that perceptions of illicit trade risk perpetuating seeing like a state, making historical and comparative perspectives paramount. Not everything the state does is moral and not every aspect of illicit trade is amoral. This may pertain especially with respect to the marginalized; extra-legal trade may provide a mode of subsistence, and state regulations may be experienced as selective, predatory, and protective of elite privilege and prevailing arrangements of inequality. States have the power to determine what is legal or criminal in the first place. Yet critical perspectives also point to how states and elite actors may benefit not only from forms of corruption, but also from illicit trade more broadly such that illicit trade is constitutive of state power, bureaucratic expansion, and international norms. Debate persists regarding whether illicit markets stabilize, build, compete with, or destabilize governance arrangements. Scholars also disagree whether illicit trade has grown, facilitated by globalization, or whether perceptions of this rising threat are shaped more by questionable numbers, state/private interests, and changing prohibitions.

Problematizing the Privatization of Water

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha Gamero
Keyword(s):  
Private Sector ◽  
World Bank ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Special Interest Groups ◽  
Trade Policies ◽  
Safe Drinking Water ◽  
Human Right ◽  
The World ◽  
Precious Resource ◽  
The Cost

This presentation will focus on the issue of the privatization of water. The privatization of water is currently being facilitated by the growth of trade liberalization and the free trade policies of international organizations like the IMF and World Bank. It is also growing due to the neoliberal policies of states and because of the increasing power of the private sector (including well- funded lobby and special interest groups) over the policies of governments. The principal arguments and viewpoints of those who both support and oppose the privatization of water will be examined and evaluated. In particular, arguments concerning the cost and accessibility of water for people will be studied. The effects and implications of privatization in highly diverse communities in both developed and developing countries will be discussed. An example from the community of Cochabamba in Bolivia will be analyzed, showing many of the drawbacks that can come with the privatization of water. This presentation will argue that water is a precious resource which ought not to be treated as a commodity. Instead, it should be treated as a human right that no individual or corporation should make a monetary profit from. Governments ought to provide safe drinking water for their citizens, rather than leaving this duty to the private sector as is happening in many parts of the world.

Halfway Homeowners: Eviction and Forced Relocation in a Florida Manufactured Home Park

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (02) ◽  
pp. 474-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Affordable Housing ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Mobile Home ◽  
Private Lands ◽  
Manufactured Housing ◽  
State Regulations ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Forced Relocation ◽  
The Stability

The last four decades of US housing policy have seen a shift from the federal allocation of affordable housing as a public good to the neoliberal model of private and for‐profit provision of affordable housing. This shift warrants a study of the link between the interests that now shape low‐income housing markets and the stability of the housing they provide. Nowhere are the effects of this shift more evident than in the homes of the 20 million Americans living in manufactured housing, which is installed largely on the private lands of for‐profit developers who can close mobile home parks and force residents to move themselves and their homes with as little as 30 days' notice. This ethnography of mass eviction in a Florida mobile home park examines state regulations intended to protect residents of closing parks and analyzes how private interests shape the implementation of these policies.

scholarly journals Creating a Disaggregated CGE Model for Trade Policy Analysis: GTAP-MVH

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-79
Author(s):  
Peter B. Dixon ◽  
Maureen Rimmer ◽  
Nhi Tran
Keyword(s):  
Computable General Equilibrium ◽  
Motor Vehicle ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Trade Policies ◽  
Cge Model ◽  
Computable General Equilibrium Models ◽  
Output Data ◽  
Jel Codes ◽  
Commercial Market ◽  
Trade Wars

Thousands of economists spread across almost every country use the GTAP model to analyse trade policies including trade wars and trade agreements. GTAP has an impressive regional coverage (140 countries), but the standard commodity coverage (57 commodities/industries) can cause frustration when tariffs on narrowly defined products are being negotiated. This article sets out a method for disaggregating commodities/industries in computable general equilibrium models such as GTAP and applies it to GTAP’s motor vehicle sector. The method makes use of readily available highly disaggregated trade data supplemented by detailed input–output data where available and data from a variety of other sources such as commercial market reports. JEL Codes: C68, F13, F14, F17

The Reaction of Private Interests to the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act

2003 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen E. Schnietz
Keyword(s):  
Event Study ◽  
Stock Return ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Magic Bullet ◽  
Archival Data ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Private Actors ◽  
Investor Reaction

In recent research on the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA), there has been no examination of the reaction of private actors to the RTAA. Did producer groups and investors in 1934 believe the Democratic RTAA was the solution to Republican protectionism, as institutional analyses of the RTAA claim, or did they realize the RTAA was no “magic bullet” against a return of protectionism, as skeptics argue? Archival data suggests that many producer groups believed the RTAA would result in durable liberalization, but that fewer understood the likely effects of its specific features. An event study of investor reaction to the RTAA reveals that export-dependent firms experienced a significant, positive stock return increase on news of the RTAA, while heavily tariff-protected firms experienced a significant stock decline, albeit several months later.

The Role of Trade in Economic Development

1968 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isaiah Frank
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Trade Policies ◽  
Poor Countries ◽  
Effective Instrument ◽  
First Time

The key role of trade in the development process is widely accepted today. Two recent events, both relating to international organizations, underscore this acceptance. One was the convening in 1964 of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and its establishment as a permanent organ of the UN system. Under UNCTAD's aegis a continuing examination is being conducted as to ways of reshaping world trade policies in the interests of the developing countries. The other event was the adoption early the following year of a new set of articles on trade and development in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). In the new articles recognition of the role of exports in economic development was established for the first time in the text of the GATT itself, and a constitutional basis was provided for GATT's many activities designed to promote the exports of developing countries. Elsewhere in this volume are essays evaluating the contributions of UNCTAD and GATT toward the promotion of development in the world's poor countries. In this essay I will rather explore more generally the relation between international trade and economic development and discuss some of the problems that have arisen in the effort to make trade a more effective instrument of development.

scholarly journals The EAEU Free Trade Agreements as a New Viable Format for the Russian Trade Policy

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-83
Author(s):  
V. N. Zuev ◽  
E. Ya. Ostrovskaya ◽  
V. Yu. Skryabina
Keyword(s):  
Trade Policy ◽  
Free Trade Agreements ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Regional Trade Agreements ◽  
Trade Policies ◽  
Regional Trade ◽  
Intensity Index ◽  
Common Trade ◽  
Trade Partners ◽  
Revealed Comparative Advantage Index

The Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) as a legal format of trade between countries has been actively developed within the last decades. Russian involvement in RTAs until recently was modest. However, after the EAEU creation in 2015, trade policies of the member countries have changed. Setting up the RTAs has become an important priority of the EAEU’s common trade policy. In this study, the assessment is made of the significance for the Russian domestic policies of the already signed and planned FTAs. The focus of the methodology of the study lies in computations of three trade indices: export significance index (suggested by authors and based on the revealed comparative advantage index), trade intensity index and symmetric trade introversion index, which were calculated for the totality of trade partners of Russia for 2019 (193 countries) in order to identify the most promising countries to conclude new FTAs. Authors come to a conclusion that the already signed Russian RTAs and newly planned Russian common FTAs on behalf of the EAEU have a potential to generate trade. Another important result of the study is that it provides the list of the first-priority countries for the new-coming FTAs for Russia and the EAEU partners in terms of efficiency in generating trade, that are - Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, Republic of Korea and Mongolia. The authors suggest to make similar calculations for other countries to support the revealed pattern.

National Treatment and the Choice Between Exports and FDI

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Hoekman ◽  
Kamal Saggi
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Direct Investment ◽  
Direct Investment ◽  
Foreign Firm ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Trade Policies ◽  
National Treatment ◽  
Foreign Markets ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
International Trade Agreements ◽  
Fdi Policies

Abstract International trade agreements increasingly constrain the ability of governments to use trade policies. Fewer international constraints apply to the use of investment policies, although there is discussion about negotiating such disciplines both regionally and multilaterally. Since firms compete in foreign markets via both exports and foreign direct investment(FDI), the following question arises: can constraints on the use of only one type of policy (trade or FDI) induce firms to adopt inefficient modes of supply when serving foreign markets? We address this question in a model in which a local and a foreign firm compete in the domestic market. In the model, the domestic government's trade and/or FDI policies as well as the foreign firm's choice between exports and FDI are endogenous. We show that even if the domestic government is constrained only in its ability to use trade (FDI) policy, and is free to set its FDI (trade) policy, the foreign firm chooses the efficient mode of supply. The key point is that it is never in the interest of the domestic government to set policies in a manner that leads the foreign firm to adopt an inefficient mode of supply.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document