A special issue of the Pacific Economic Review features papers from a conference titled The Economics of the Doha Round and the WTO, held at the University of Hong Kong on 16–17 December 2005, in parallel with the Sixth WTO Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong, with appearances by Robert Baldwin, Bernard Hoekman, Kym Anderson, Will Martin, Michael O. More, and others.

The latest issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives has some top notch trade economists discussing their research specialties.

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Ben Muse presents a pair of “scary campfire tales for economic policy analysts,” in which Joseph Francois and Brad DeLong lament the hostility of government bureaucrats and representatives to trade policy analysts. After reading those, you might reach for Simon Evenett’s “The trade policy jungle: a survival guide for academic economists” (pdf) in hopes of calming your fears.

While the Doha negotiations are going nowhere fast, the Uruguay round might be moving backwards — its implementation is up in the air due to a court case decided this week. Orin Kerr reports:

Golan v. Gonzales, a fascinating Tenth Circuit case… went most of the way towards striking down section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act on First Amendment grounds. As I understand it, this section of the act restored the copyright of some foreign materials that had fallen into the public domain; it was passed to satisfy the U.S. treaty obligation to afford the same copyright protection to foreign authors as U.S. law provides to U.S. authors. Golan’s argument is that taking the materials out of the public domain violated the First Amendment.

I just learned of this case, and most of the bloggers covering it are lawyers, so I don’t know the implications for trade policy or how other countries might react.

It’s already late evening, so I won’t have a chance to read the Cato Institute’s latest Economic Freedom of the World report until tomorrow evening. Here’s their blurb:

Economic freedom in one country can spread to another and when neighboring countries implement simultaneous reforms to encourage economic freedom the impact is broader…

Using spatial econometric models, the study’s authors [Russell S. Sobel and Peter T. Leeson] concluded that “while changes in the economic freedom in one country have only a modest impact on neighboring countries, when multiple neighbors experience simultaneous changes in economic freedom, the impact is much greater. Thus broad regional changes in freedom can and do have significant impacts on surrounding countries.”

My gut reaction to this claim is skepticism, but I don’t strongly hold that prior belief, as I’ve never thought about this topic before. I’ll have to check out their work and post an update later in the week.

It’s already late evening, so I won’t have a chance to read the Cato Institute’s latest Economic Freedom of the World report until tomorrow evening. Here’s their blurb:

Economic freedom in one country can spread to another and when neighboring countries implement simultaneous reforms to encourage economic freedom the impact is broader…

Using spatial econometric models, the study’s authors [Russell S. Sobel and Peter T. Leeson] concluded that “while changes in the economic freedom in one country have only a modest impact on neighboring countries, when multiple neighbors experience simultaneous changes in economic freedom, the impact is much greater. Thus broad regional changes in freedom can and do have significant impacts on surrounding countries.”

My gut reaction to this claim is skepticism, but I don’t strongly hold that prior belief, as I’ve never thought about this topic before. I’ll have to check out their work and post an update later in the week.

Robert Z. Lawrence says that trade and inequality aren’t linked à la the conventional wisdom:

Not only have imports from developing countries increased dramatically, but the relative prices of manufactured goods from these countries have declined steadily since the early 90s. Yet the big surprise is that over the past fifteen years wages of the least skilled Americans – the lowest 10 percent – have kept pace with the median. Moreover, since 1999, while real wage growth in general has been sluggish, most US relative wage and compensation measures indicate little evidence of increased inequality…

At relatively high levels of aggregation the data indicate that manufactured imports overall, and even those from developing countries such as China, are concentrated in US manufacturing sectors which pay significantly higher than average US wages. This means that import displacement does not fall disproportionately on less skilled workers…

At more disaggregated levels, however, the data suggests that goods imported from developing countries such as China are associated with relatively less skilled labor inputs and – judging by their unit values – qualitatively different from those produced by developed countries such as the US. This provides support for the view that much of this trade reflects more complete specialisation and as such does not result in either wage inequality or downward pressure on wages generally.

It will take more research to quantify the relative magnitudes of these two effects. Nonetheless, it does appear that over the past decade, US income inequality has continued to grow but not in a way that suggests trade with developing countries is the major reason. It’s not the least skilled who have fallen behind but profits and the wages of the very richest Americans that have raced ahead.

From Trade Observatory comes a wacky piece by David Sirota:

As Congress reconvenes this week, K Street and a handful of Democratic congressional leaders are gearing up to pass lobbyist-written trade pacts with Peru, Panama, South Korea and Columbia – the group of pacts known as The Secret Trade Deal of 2007, originally announced on May 10, 2007.

First, if they’re known as “The Secret Trade Deal” and publicly announced, then they’re not much of a secret, huh? Second, since when was a column summarizing AP, Inside US Trade, and Reuters stories revealing any secrets? Third, are they really “known” as The Secret Trade Deal of 2007 if the inventor of the phrase is the only person who uses it?

If David Sirota is “a progressive powerhouse,” then progressives ought to worry about their ability to debate trade issues. Trade Observatory should start syndicating Dean Baker instead.

It’s getting even worse.

[HT: DeLong]