The Right to Trade Rethinking the Aid for Trade Agenda

Aid for trade is a fixture in the development landscape, accounting for approximately 25 per cent of total ODA, and is being positioned as a building block in the future development agenda beyond the 2015 expiry of the Millennium Development Goals. In The Right to Trade, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton argue that aid for trade has not delivered on its initial promise.

To create a genuinely pro-development trade liberalisation agenda, the authors propose that a right to trade and a right to development be enshrined within the WTOs dispute settlement system; and that aid for trade funds be consolidated into a coherent and predictable framework, where dedicated funds are committed by rich countries to a Global Trade Facility and dispersed through a transparent and competitive process. Together these proposals would help ensure that international trade works for developing countries and will help preserve a development-friendly multilateral trading system.

Joseph E. Stiglitz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 and is a University Professor at Columbia University. He was Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 1997-2000 and Chair of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors from 1995-97.

Andrew Charlton is an economist who has worked for the London School of Economics, the United Nations and the Boston Consulting Group. Between 2008 and 2010, he was senior economic adviser to the prime minister of Australia. He received his doctorate in economics from Oxford University.