Peter Gallagher

The OECD’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the data shows that Aus­tralians have risen 5 places (from 15 to 10) in the twenty-one mem­ber OECD’s rank­ing of GDP per capita between 1990 and 2002. But this is at the expense of hours worked: pro­duc­tiv­ity per hour worked is unchanged in that time! Aus­tralian pro­duc­tiv­ity lev­els are well below those …

Ben cov­ers the com­pe­ti­tion for the WTO’s Direc­tor Gen­eral posi­tion, news on the Byrd Amend­ment, the desul­tory nego­ti­a­tions on improve­ments to the WTO anti-dumping rules, and about the hollow-sounding res­o­lu­tions emerg­ing from Davos on the need to put both more effort and more com­pro­mise into the Doha nego­ti­a­tions (do the two go together, do you think…?)

The star­tling pro­posal from the EC Com­mis­sion to “elim­i­nate all export subsidies”:http://www.inquit.com/index.php/weblog/comments/us_welcomes_eu_initiative_on_export_subsidies/following this round of nego­ti­a­tions seems to solve most of the prob­lems about “cir­cum­ven­tion” that plagued the Urur­guay Round agree­ment on the reduc­tion of export sub­si­dies. The zero end-point com­bined with a fixed date for elim­i­na­tion seems to put an end to con­cerns about …