Getting ready for the millennium round trade negotiations
Contents: 1. Overview / Eugenio Diaz-Bonilla and Sherman Robinson 2. Latin American perspective / Eugenio Diaz-Bonilla and Lucio Reca 3. Asian perspective / Marcus Noland 4. African perspective / Natasha Mukherjee and Rebecca Lee Harris 5. Transition Economies' perspective / Ulrike Grote and Peter Wehrheim 6. European Union perspective / Stefan Tangermann 7. United States of America perspective / Dale Hathaway 8. Least-developed Countries' perspective / Eugenio Diaz-Bonilla, Marcelle Thomas, and Valeria Pineiro 9. Cairns Group perspective / Kym Anderson.
ISSUES AFFECTING LATIN AMERICAN AGRICULTURE AND FUTURE TRADE NEGOTIATIONS
Agriculture and agro-industry are central components for the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Currently they account for approximately 25 percent of the regional GDP, and for the primary agricultural sector alone, about 10 percent. For several countries such as Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua and Paraguay, just the primary agricultural sector represents more than 20 percent of the GDP; in others such as Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama and Suriname, that participation is between 10 percent and 20 percent. In terms of employment, the primary agricultural sector represents more than 25 percent of total employment, with several countries showing greater participation: Belize (33 percent), Bolivia (47 percent), Ecuador (33 percent), El Salvador (36 percent), Guatemala (52 percent), Haiti (67 percent), Honduras (about 40 percent), Paraguay (39 percent), and Peru (36 percent).
To Devolve or Not To Devolve? Welfare Reform in the States
This article analyzes variation in the degree to which states have responded to the devolution of welfare at the federal level by devolving authority over welfare policy to local government. I find that to the extent that states have devolved authority to lower levels of government, they tend to be states that already had a high degree of involvement of local government in welfare provision. In states without this record of local government involvement, the devolution that has occurred has not generated greater involvement of local government, but rather responsibility has been devolved to regional entities with ties to workforce development and with a substantial degree of business involvement. As states gain increasing authority over a redistributive policy, they may begin to treat it as a subset of a larger developmental policy—workforce development.