Author: wkring

2021: Now Accepting Pre and Post-Doctoral Fellow Applications for Global China Initiative Fellowship Program

Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center (GDP Center) seeks applicants for both pre-and post-doctoral fellowships to work on its Global China Initiative (GCI). In addition to receiving support for dissertation and post-dissertation work, fellows will participate in the China initiative’s research projects, seminar series, and policy engagement activities. The energy and climate team is seeking […]

Report: Trade treaties and fiscal stability in the COVID-19 era

Trade and investment treaties are partially standing in the way of emerging market and developing country efforts to create as much fiscal space possible in order to fight the COVID-19 virus, protect the vulnerable, and put together pathways for a sustainable economic recovery. This is the main finding coming out of a new GDP Center report […]

Domestic Resource Mobilization and the Trade and Investment Regime: The Need for Policy Coherence

The challenges that developing countries have faced in terms of fiscal constraints, debt overhang and access to essential medicines existed long before COVID-19 and will persist long after it is gone. In November 2019, the Boston University Global Development Policy Center partnered with the Intergovernmental Group of 24 on International Monetary Affairs and Development (G-24) […]

The Fiscal Impacts of Trade and Investment Treaties

There is a renewed global push to mobilize resources to meet glaring global infrastructure gaps, the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Climate Agreement commitments and generally improve standards of living. A core component of such resource mobilization will be the generation of domestic resources through taxation. Whereas tariffs form a miniscule share of public revenue […]

Growing Share of Online Trade Undercuts Government Ability to Pull-in Revenue

The internet and rapid development in information technology (IT) has revolutionized the way the world trades and conducts business. The majority of buying and selling goods and services moved online through online marketplaces. The changing nature of trade should also mean a change in government policy in response. However, it is challenging to define efficient […]

Create Space for Indigenous Leadership to Preserve Agricultural Biodiversity

Indigenous peoples have bred crop varieties over centuries that are adapted to various climatic conditions. But genocide, land grabs and the Green Revolution have rendered many of these varieties lost forever. Despite all this, surviving indigenous communities have retained their traditional agricultural practices, knowledge and biodiversity. Indigenous knowledge strengthens global food security. In order to […]

The GDP Center Stands Against Racism

In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” civil rights leader Martin Luther King (GRS ’55, Hon.’59) said “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” While the work of the GDP Center […]

GDP Center launches Trade and Medicines Working Group to make sense of COVID era

As governments struggle to make their health care systems more resilient in the COVID-19, Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center has established an expert “Working Group on Trade and Access to Medicines.” The aim of the group is to generate evidence-based policy research that helps policy-makers align the trade and investment treaty regime with universal […]

The Social Costs of Graduating from Least Developed Country Status: Analyzing the Impact of Increased Protection on Insulin Prices in Bangladesh

In 2021, the United Nations Committee on Development Policy adopted a resolution that Bangladesh would graduate from least developed country (LDC) status after a period of five years. As a result, Bangladesh will have to forego its exemption to intellectual property (IP) provisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO) by 2026. As an LDC, Bangladesh took […]