The UN and Global Political Economy: Trade, Finance, and Development
John Toye and Richard Toye

An assessment of the UN's role as intellectual actor in the fields of trade, finance, and development, with particular attention to differential treatment for developing countries as well as the following:

  • The early work on the terms of trade controversy by Raúl Prebisch and Hans Singer.
  • Diversity and convergence of factors for a World Trade Conference and the stillborn International Trade Organization.
  • Trade as a development issue.
  • The establishment of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
  • Commodity policy, transfer of technology, and generalized system of preferences.
  • Import substitution as proposed at the end of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s by the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA, ECLAC).
  • The role of the UN in the switch toward export promotion and trade liberalization.
  • The need for and limits of private and public investment.
  • The role of debt relief and donor consultations (Paris Club, Consultative Groups and UNDP round tables).
  • International actions to address volatility.

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