Author Archives: jdingel

Banana independence!

Robert Higgs:

If we were talking about bananas, everybody would see immediately the foolishness of seeking “banana independence.” Nobody would fall for half-baked arguments about our addiction to foreign bananas or our love affair with banana bread. It’s obviously uneconomic to grow millions of bananas in this country; it could be done, but doing it would entail much greater costs than buying them from producers in places better suited to their production (that is, places where they can be produced at lower opportunity cost).

There might be some good reasons to be skeptical of free trade in oil, but I doubt those are what politicians have in mind when they urge us to “break our addiction to foreign oil.”

[HT: Arnold Kling]

Millennium Development Goals: Who’s in charge here?

The table in today’s Vox column by Helmut Reisen illustrates the lack of accountability in development assistance — when everyone is responsible, no one is.


Table 1 Unclear institutional assignment to the MDGs

Selected multilaterals working on the Millennium Development Goals
MDG / Thematic area Main multilaterals Other multilaterals with a role
MDG1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger UNDP, World Bank, AfDB, AsDB, IFAD, EC, FAO, WFP CGIAR, IADB
MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education World Bank, UNICEF, UNESCO UNFPA, UNRWA
MDG 3: Promote gender equality and empower women UNDP, World Bank, UNIFEM, UNICEF UNFPA
MDG 4: Reduce child mortality WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF World Bank, WFP, UNRWA
MDG 5: Improve maternal health WHO, UNFPA World Bank, WFP
MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases UNAIDS, World Bank, WHO, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF UNIFEM
MDG 7: Ensure environmental sustainability UN Habitat, World Bank, AsDB, UNDP CGIAR, UNIDO
MDG 8: Develop a global partnership for development World Bank, EU, UNDP, UNIDO, ILO, UNCTAD UNDP
Human rights OHCHR UNIFEM
Conflicts and humanitarian emergencies UNCHR, OCHA, ECHO, WFP, UNICEF, WHO UNDP

Source: OECD Development Centre, “Financing Development: Whose Ownership?”, Paris, 2008, Chapter 2.

Millennium Development Goals: Who's in charge here?

The table in today’s Vox column by Helmut Reisen illustrates the lack of accountability in development assistance — when everyone is responsible, no one is.


Table 1 Unclear institutional assignment to the MDGs

Selected multilaterals working on the Millennium Development Goals
MDG / Thematic area Main multilaterals Other multilaterals with a role
MDG1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger UNDP, World Bank, AfDB, AsDB, IFAD, EC, FAO, WFP CGIAR, IADB
MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education World Bank, UNICEF, UNESCO UNFPA, UNRWA
MDG 3: Promote gender equality and empower women UNDP, World Bank, UNIFEM, UNICEF UNFPA
MDG 4: Reduce child mortality WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF World Bank, WFP, UNRWA
MDG 5: Improve maternal health WHO, UNFPA World Bank, WFP
MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases UNAIDS, World Bank, WHO, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF UNIFEM
MDG 7: Ensure environmental sustainability UN Habitat, World Bank, AsDB, UNDP CGIAR, UNIDO
MDG 8: Develop a global partnership for development World Bank, EU, UNDP, UNIDO, ILO, UNCTAD UNDP
Human rights OHCHR UNIFEM
Conflicts and humanitarian emergencies UNCHR, OCHA, ECHO, WFP, UNICEF, WHO UNDP

Source: OECD Development Centre, “Financing Development: Whose Ownership?”, Paris, 2008, Chapter 2.

Millennium Development Goals: Who's in charge here?

The table in today’s Vox column by Helmut Reisen illustrates the lack of accountability in development assistance — when everyone is responsible, no one is.


Table 1 Unclear institutional assignment to the MDGs

Selected multilaterals working on the Millennium Development Goals
MDG / Thematic area Main multilaterals Other multilaterals with a role
MDG1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger UNDP, World Bank, AfDB, AsDB, IFAD, EC, FAO, WFP CGIAR, IADB
MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education World Bank, UNICEF, UNESCO UNFPA, UNRWA
MDG 3: Promote gender equality and empower women UNDP, World Bank, UNIFEM, UNICEF UNFPA
MDG 4: Reduce child mortality WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF World Bank, WFP, UNRWA
MDG 5: Improve maternal health WHO, UNFPA World Bank, WFP
MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases UNAIDS, World Bank, WHO, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF UNIFEM
MDG 7: Ensure environmental sustainability UN Habitat, World Bank, AsDB, UNDP CGIAR, UNIDO
MDG 8: Develop a global partnership for development World Bank, EU, UNDP, UNIDO, ILO, UNCTAD UNDP
Human rights OHCHR UNIFEM
Conflicts and humanitarian emergencies UNCHR, OCHA, ECHO, WFP, UNICEF, WHO UNDP

Source: OECD Development Centre, “Financing Development: Whose Ownership?”, Paris, 2008, Chapter 2.

Japan should open up to rice imports

Japan should have long ago slashed its absurdly high rice tariffs. Michiyo Nakamoto reminds us in the FT why liberalization is in Japan’s and others’ interests:

Japan is one of the world’s largest importers of food products. The country that brought the world miso soup, tofu and soya sauce produces only 20 per cent of the soyabeans that go towards making these daily staples.

Japan’s dependence on imported food has grown so much over the years, along with the westernisation of its eating habits, that food self-sufficiency measured by calories consumed has tumbled from 79 per cent in 1960 to 40 per cent today…

Japan has taken a fiercely protectionist stance over rice, imposing tariffs of 778 per cent on imports… it has left the long-term viability of Japan’s rice sector under serious question. The failure to introduce market efficiencies has meant that despite Japan’s high rice prices, rice farming is so unprofitable that few young people are willing to take it on. As a result, more than half of rice farmers are in their 70s and most of them only produce rice part-time.

What is more, only 60 per cent of the land available for use as rice paddies is actually being used and as ageing farmers retire, this proportion is expected to fall. If the situation is left unchecked, Japan’s rice crop could plunge from an annual 8.5m tonnes to about 4m tonnes, says Akio Shibata, director of the Marubeni Research Institute. Mr Shibata worries that even if Japan opened its market to rice imports, it might not be able to procure all the supplies it needs, given recent global trends…

The issue is not just a matter of feeding the Japanese population. As one of the world’s largest food importers, Japan’s lack of food self-sufficiency could have a potentially damaging impact on supplies for other countries with less buying power… As a country that relies so heavily on food imports, Japan needs to play its part in ensuring stability in global food trade.

Building blocks vs stumbling blocks in Latin America

A new discussion paper by Antoni Estevadeordal, Caroline Freund, and Emanuel Ornelas says that regional trade deals amongst Latin American countries have been building blocks for multilateral liberalization — “there is strong evidence that preferences induce a faster decline in external tariffs in free trade areas“.

This contrasts with Nuno Limão’s results for the United States and Europe, where “multilateral tariff reductions in PTA goods were smaller than those in similar goods not imported from PTA partners.”

Do US PTAs pave the way for subsidized exports?

I question Oxfam’s critique of the (yet-to-be-implemented) preferential trade agreement between Peru and United States. Oxfam’s Song of the Sirens report alleges:

According to the agreements signed, Colombia and Peru ‘shall not apply any price band system to agricultural goods imported from the United States’, thereby leaving national producers unprotected and exposed to the mercy of duty-free US imports.
US insistence on the dismantling of the price band system leaves the Andean countries with no alternative means of protection to counteract the effects of US subsidies [emphasis added]. It is also further evidence of double standards in US foreign trade policy. Oxfam believes that, insofar as the USA continues to provide extensive subsidies which lead to unfair trade practices, it should uphold the protection mechanisms used by developing countries to safeguard their most vulnerable domestic sectors.

The agreement’s Chapter 8, Section B:

1. Each Party retains its rights and obligations under the WTO Agreement with regard to the application of antidumping and countervailing duties.

2. No provision of this Agreement, including the provisions of Chapter Twenty-One (Dispute Settlement), shall be construed as imposing any rights or obligations on the Parties with respect to antidumping or countervailing duty measures.

So if the United States wrongly subsidizes agricultural exports, why can’t Peru just impose countervailing duties? As far as I know, CVDs can be applied to anything that isn’t green box. Oxfam’s report doesn’t mention CVDs — surely it should have. Can anyone explain their claim? Are US PTAs really paving the way for subsidized agricultural exports?

Blame game fact check!

After seeing Paul Krugman say that the collapse of Doha is less troublesome than the 2002 steel tariff, Brad DeLong starts the blame game:

I remember Glenn Hubbard, Larry Lindsey, Greg Mankiw, and company all saying that Bush had to impose his steel tariffs in 2002 as a price for getting fast-track authority so that he could successfully complete… the Doha Round.

When and where did they say it? Here’s a WaPo review of how it played out:

R. Glenn Hubbard, then chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, drafted detailed analyses against the tariffs, including state-by-state job losses that he forecast for manufacturing…

then-Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill expressed philosophical opposition to tariffs, but he was more interested in opening talks with allies on limiting steel production capacity abroad.

At a crucial meeting of the economic team, tariff opponents said they were abandoned. O’Neill sent his undersecretary for international affairs, John Taylor. Then-Budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. told Hubbard, who also has since left the administration, that he would back him, but left the meeting before Hubbard’s presentation. And Lawrence Lindsey, the famously opinionated chairman of the White House National Economic Council, decided his role was to facilitate the discussion, not express an opinion.

Perhaps most importantly, former Bush economic advisers said, Robert B. Zoellick, the U.S. trade representative, supported the tariffs, figuring that backing them would win congressional votes to give Bush “fast track” trade negotiation powers.

So we can indict Zoellick. And Lindsey and O’Neill can be blamed for being too passive. In fact, an article in the Sunday Times (“Steeling away,” 10 March 2002) makes it clear that Lindsey was on board:

“Instinctively, I am a free trader. But in the case of steel, the free-trade argument is tough to make. Tariffs are never my first choice, but the second, third and fourth choices weren’t too good either.”

And what about the electoral politics? “I’m sure that never entered the calculus,” says Lindsey, his broad smile giving him away.

Also blame Karl Rove and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, who fought Hubbard, according to this NYT story.

Greg Mankiw was not in the administration at the time, and Factiva and Google return no relevant results for Mankiw + steel in 2002. When did he say something in support of the steel tariffs?

Blame Rove. Blame Zoellick. Blame Lindsey. Blame Evans. Indeed, Bruce Bartlett blamed them when the tariffs were imposed. But where’s the dirt on Glenn Hubbard and Greg Mankiw?

Naomi Klein loves a binding constraint

Naomi Klein must really dislike international commerce:

Cheap oil, the lubricant of quick, inexpensive transportation links across the world, may not return anytime soon, upsetting the logic of diffuse global supply chains that treat geography as a footnote in the pursuit of lower wages… [A footnote? Sheesh, this is the newspaper that employs Tom Friedman, huh?]

“If we think about the Wal-Mart model, it is incredibly fuel-intensive at every stage, and at every one of those stages we are now seeing an inflation of the costs for boats, trucks, cars,” said Naomi Klein, the author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. “That is necessarily leading to a rethinking of this emissions-intensive model, whether the increased interest in growing foods locally, producing locally or shopping locally, and I think that’s great.”

Oil scarcity takes a chunk out of humanity’s production possibilities frontier, and Ms Klein cheers.

[Perhaps Klein is happy because she’s worried about global warming, rather than cheering for the ‘buy local’ movement. In that case, the NYT‘s quotation wasn’t very helpful. But these high oil prices are a symptom of increased demand, not reduced supply, so they are hardly evidence that the world is reducing emissions.]