After the Hong Kong meetings in December 2005, what are the key trade and development issues that face developing countries in the closing stages of the Doha Round? Leading economic analysts--including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz--examine the detailed issues that developing country negotiators must understand. As always, the devil lies in the detail, and it is at the detailed level that the costs and benefits of trade agreements will be determined.

Essential reading for policymakers, government officials, scholars and students interested in the making and conduct of international trade negotiations and policy.

Contributors include Ivan Mbirimi, an economic advisor in the Economic Affairs Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat; Andrew Charlton, a Research Officer at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics; Jane Kennan, a data policy analyst at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex; David Primack, who works in the Economic Affairs Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat; Christopher Stevens, Coordinator of the International Economic Development Group at the Overseas Development Institute, UK; Joseph E. Stiglitz, who 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 Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors from 1995-97.

Table of Contents:

1) Will the Doha Round Deliver for Development?—Ivan Mbirimi; 2) Aid for Trade—Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton; 3) Implications of the Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration on Duty-Free and Quota-Free Access for Least Developed Countries—Jane Kennan and Christopher Stevens; 4) Addressing Global Cotton Subsidies: Uprooting the Seeds of Poverty in Hong Kong and Beyond—David Primack.