How Does Vietnam's Accession to the World Trade Organization Change the Spatial Incidence of Poverty?

• Main Authors: FUJII, Tomoki, Roland-Holst, David
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2008
• Subjects: Trade liberalization; microsimulation; computable general equilibrium; small-area estimation; Vietnam; Asian Studies; International Economics
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/568; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soe_research/article/1567/viewcontent/Vietnam_WTO_sv.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Trade liberalization is good for growth, and growth is good for the poor. This argument is simple but powerful. It has served as the departure point for discussion of the link between trade and poverty among economists and policy-makers, regardless of whether and to what extent they buy this argument. Krueger (1998) considers the inefficiencies that import substitution strategy creates and argues that trade liberalization undertaken at a period of low or negative growth rates can normally lead to a period of higher growth rates. Bhagwati and Srinivasan (2002) emphasize the empirical evidence of China and India. That is, these two giant economies achieved faster growth and poverty reduction through greater integration into the world economy. Dollar and Kraay (2002, 2004) use cross country regression to support this argument.