14 quotes
Intellectual property does not really belong in a trade agreement.
Making globalization work (2006)
In the long run, the most important changes required to make globalization work are reforms to reduce the democratic deficit.
Making globalization work (2006)
If there is to be support for trade globalization in the developed world, we must make sure that the benefits and costs are more evenly shared, which will entail more progressive income taxation.
Making globalization work (2006)
When I was at the World Bank, it would often be said in the face of obvious failure that our strategy was correct, it just wasn't implemented well.
Making globalization work (2006)
Limited liability should not be sacrosanct. Like property rights—including intellectual property—it is a creation of man, to provide appropriate incentives; when that artifice fails to fulfill its social function, it needs to be modified.
Making globalization work (2006)
The era of multilateral trade liberalization seems to be nearing an end (at least for a while), as well-founded disillusionment in the developing countries combines with growing protectionist sentiment in the developed world.
Making globalization work (2006)
New technologies (reinforced by new trade rules) are enhancing the market power of incumbent, dominant firms, such as Microsoft, which are all from the developed world; for the first time, in a key global industry, there is a near-global monopolist.
Making globalization work (2006)
The natural resource curse is not fate; it is choice. The exploitation of natural resources is an important part of globalization today, and in some ways the failures of the resource-rich developing countries are emblematic of globalization's failures.
Making globalization work (2006)
In part, free trade has not worked because we have not tried it: trade agreements of the past have been neither free nor fair. They have been asymmetric, opening up markets in the developing countries to goods from the advanced industrial countries without full reciprocation.
Making globalization work (2006)
TRIPs imposed on the entire world the dominant intellectual property regime in the United States and Europe, as it is today. I believe that the way that intellectual property regime has evolved is not good for the United States and the EU; but even more, I believe it is not in the interest of the developing countries.
Making globalization work (2006)
One of the reasons that basic research is advanced most by not resorting to intellectual property is that while doing so would have questionable benefits, the costs are apparent. [...] Interestingly, even in software, this system of open collaboration has worked. Today we have the Linux computer operating system, which is also based on the principle of open architecture.
Making globalization work (2006)
The job of the Western trade negotiators is to get a better trade deal for their country's interests—for example, gaining more market access and stronger intellectual property rights—without giving up agriculture subsidies or nontariff trade barriers. Fairness is not in the lexicon of these trade negotiators.
Making globalization work (2006)
The problem is easy to state: developing countries borrow too much—or are lent too much—and in ways that force them to bear most or all of the risk of subsequent increases in interest rates, fluctuations in the exchange rate, or decreases in income. Given this, it is not surprising that they often cannot repay what is owed.
Making globalization work (2006)
Instead, unchecked by competition [by the USSR] to "win the heart and minds" of those in the Third World, the advanced industrial countries actually created a global trade regime that helped their special corporate and financial interests, and hurt the poorest countries of the world.
Making globalization work (2006)