Peter Gallagher

I’ve been trav­el­ing a lot in the past month and haven’t posted here as often as I should (I’m writ­ing this after a day spent at the head­quar­ters of the Andean Eco­nomic Com­mu­nity in Lima, Peru). In a visit to Wash­ing­ton, Brus­sels and Geneva in the past month it was pretty clear to me that, …

Over the last year or so I orga­nized sev­eral meet­ings between a group of busi­nesses, indus­try asso­ci­a­tions and senior trade offi­cials to dis­cuss prepa­ra­tions for the nego­ti­a­tions. There is mod­est enthu­si­asm and a great deal of scep­ti­cism about the pro­posed agree­ment among busi­ness groups. In con­trast to the US agree­ment, many busi­nesses ques­tion whether there …

Dr Supachai begins by mak­ing the ortho­dox but fund­men­tal obser­va­tion that “food self-sufficiency is not equiv­a­lent to food secu­rity.” Autarky has never been a sen­si­ble pol­icy either for growth or for food secu­rity. If it were then North Korea really would be the “work­ers’ par­adise” (the for­mer Alba­nia, too). bq. Today there is, how­ever, the …

Trade growth was stronger around the world in the first half of 2004 than it had been for more than two decades.  Nom­i­nal mer­chan­dise trade growth of 21% was due to a com­bi­na­tion of strong real trade growth (9%) and a sharp increase in dol­lar prices (11%) bq. Rid­ing a wave of higher oil and …

My co-editors on this project, which began early last year, are Andrew Stoler, Direc­tor of “IIBE&L”:http://www.iibel.adelaide.edu.au/ and Patrick Low, Direc­tor of Devel­op­ment and Eco­nomic Research at “WTO”:www.wto.org. The case study authors are aca­d­e­mics, offi­cials, expert ana­lysts and busi­nes­sas­so­ci­a­tion exec­u­tives in about 30 devel­op­ing coun­tries (and one or two devel­oped economies) includ­ing strong rep­re­sen­ta­tion from North, …

bq. In con­trast to Indone­sia, where real democ­racy took root after the oust­ing of Suharto, post-Mahathir Malaysia has kept a sys­tem of author­i­tar­ian rule cloaked in demo­c­ra­tic trap­pings and reliant for its legit­i­macy on per­pet­ual eco­nomic growth. Like the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist party, Umno fears noth­ingso much as eco­nomic reces­sion. As far as his Umno col­leagues …

John Lloyd, a Finan­cial Times edi­tor, makes a good case that “the stern, illib­eral and anti-modern …  John Paul” could only have viewed this week’s media ecstasy as a tragedy. bq. In Rome this week, we have seen another kind of frenzy: a media-assisted swarm­ing about the body of the Pope. This has been gen­er­ously …