'The International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) was established in Geneva in September 1996 to contribute to a better understanding of development and environment concerns in the context of international trade.

As an independent non-profit and non-governmental organisation, ICTSD engages a broad range of actors in ongoing dialogue about trade and sustainable development. With a wide network of governmental, non-governmental and inter-governmental partners, ICTSD plays more...

Places do well when they promote transformations along the dimensions of economic geography: higher densities as cities grow; shorter distances as workers and businesses migrate closer to density; and fewer divisions as nations lower their economic borders and enter world markets to take advantage of scale and trade in specialized products. World Development Report 2009 concludes that the transformations along these three dimensions--density, distance, and division--are essential for development more...

'When trade ministers meet in the United States late this year, they may launch a newround of global trade talks under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO). If the ministers indeed initiate this “millennium round,” agriculture will be part of it. Otherwise, agricultural negotiations will proceed on their own, since Article 20 of the Uruguay Round (UR) Agreement on Agriculture states that agricultural negotiations should be resumed during 1999.'

Source: IFPRI, April 1999

Updated Version, Christa Wichterich, WIDE June 2008. This report on the EU-China partnership and co-operation relations comes in a series of political analysis of EU trade agreements with countries in the South from a gendered perspective. China remains to a large extent a blind spot in the gendered analysis of neoliberal globalization. Only a few in-depth studies on women workers in export production have been published recently. In particular, the service sector and care economies are unknown more...

'This paper examines the impact of reducing corruption and improving transparency to lower trade costs in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation region. The authors find, based on a computable general equilibrium model, significant potential trade and welfare gains for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation members, with increased transparency and lower levels of corruption. Results suggest that trade in the region would increase by 11 percent and global welfare would expand by $406 billion by raising more...

'BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Although the more than 52,000 cases of children made sick by melamine-tainted dairy products have been limited to mainland China -- except for one in Hong Kong -- governments as far away as Africa have stopped importing Chinese dairy products.

Closer to China, governments in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia have also banned Chinese dairy imports. In all, at least 10 countries have banned the imports.

The precautions come as the number of affected children in C more...

'Since 1999, many developing countries have registered strong improvements in their external balances, and their aggregate current account has swung into surplus. As a result, as a group they have become net exporters of capital to developed countries. Many of them, particularly a number of fast growing exporters of manufactures, owe this situation to their successful global integration and to a reorientation of their macroeconomic policies towards a greater focus on competitive exchange rates. more...

'The world of business does not bear the sole responsibility for the environmental problems confronting us - every single member of society does, meaning that private persons and the authorities and everyone else are summoned to change ecological course. However, in the world of political reality it is the impact of industry on the environment - with varying emphasis, depending on the field of activity - that occupies most often the foreground of public attention.'

'The rise of Neoliberalism in the 1980s dramatically transformed
the industrial practices of many developing countries, signalling the
shift towards export-oriented industrialisation. Since then, the spread
of globalised production has gone hand-in-hand with intensified
exploitation of a decentralized, flexible and cheap labour force
(Mezzadri 2008)'. Author(s): Mezzadri, A (2008) Centre for Development Policy and Research (SOAS): London, Development ViewPoint N.12, August 2008.

Irene van Staveren, February 2007. (WIDE paper). Mainstreaming gender into trade policy is an important matter: trade impacts on gender relations in a variety of ways. Gender impacts may be positive or negative, depending on the pattern of trade, the values of imports and exports, the sectoral distribution of exports and import competition, the skill level of male and female employment, labour market policies and institutions, laws and the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, the gender divi more...