Central to the following discussion is the assertion that a foreign trade policy which maximizes the static efficiency gains from trade may result in reduced dynamic or X-efficiency and thus impair a developing country’s development potential. The dominant view of the relation between...

The socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics has turned into a systemic trade and investment issue both bilaterally and multilaterally. The hope that WTO membership would eventually transform China into a market economy with distortions that would gradually become tolerable and...

The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has a long history of intellectual independence. This article details how Western countries tried to marginalise the organisation and its work – which is often critical of Western powers – during the 2012 UNCTAD conference. While developing...

Protectionism in international trade, in particular with regard to imports from developing countries, has increased rapidly since the beginning of the 1970s. Dieter Schumacher analyses the reasons for this development and makes some proposals for a liberalization of trade which take the...