Global Economy & Trade — Glossary

Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson are economists whose institutional theory holds that inclusive political and economic institutions, not geography or culture, drive long-run national prosperity.

An ad valorem tax or duty is levied as a fixed percentage of the assessed monetary value of a good, service, or property rather than on its quantity.

Adam Smith (1723–1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and the founder of classical political economy, author of The Wealth of Nations (1776).

The Addis Ababa Action Agenda is the 2015 UN financing-for-development framework that aligns domestic, public, private and international resources with the Sustainable Development Goals.

Amartya Sen is an Indian economist and philosopher who won the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on welfare economics, social choice, and development.

An analytical/argumentative essay is a structured prose composition that develops a reasoned thesis on a contested question through evidence, logical argument, and rebuttal of counterpositions.

Anti-dumping duties are corrective tariffs imposed on imports priced below their normal value to neutralise injury caused to a domestic industry.

Autonomous sanctions are coercive economic or political measures imposed unilaterally by a state or regional bloc without authorisation from the UN Security Council.

The Belt and Road Initiative is China's transcontinental infrastructure, trade, and investment programme launched by Xi Jinping in 2013 to link Asia, Europe, Africa, and Latin America.

The Brandt Line is a conceptual divide drawn in 1980 separating the wealthy industrialised Global North from the poorer developing Global South.

Capital-account opening is the progressive removal of state controls on cross-border financial flows, permitting residents and non-residents to freely move investment, loans, and securities.

The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism is the European Union's tariff on the embedded carbon emissions of selected imports, designed to prevent carbon leakage and equalise climate costs.

A carbon dividend is the per-capita cash rebate returned to households from revenue raised by a carbon tax or fee, designed to offset higher energy costs.

The Common Framework for Debt Treatments is a G20 and Paris Club mechanism, agreed in November 2020, to coordinate sovereign-debt restructuring for the world's poorest countries.

Current-affairs linkage is the examination technique of connecting a static syllabus concept to a dated, real-world development to demonstrate applied understanding.

Data localization is a legal requirement that data on a country's citizens or operations be collected, processed, and stored within that country's borders before any foreign transfer.

De-dollarisation is the deliberate reduction of reliance on the US dollar for international trade settlement, reserve holdings, and cross-border finance by states and institutions.

Definitional MCQs are multiple-choice questions that test a candidate's command of the precise meaning, scope, or technical attributes of a defined term, concept, or institution.

DSU Article 25 is the provision of the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding that authorises expeditious arbitration as an alternative means of resolving disputes by mutual agreement of the parties.

The Enabling Clause is a 1979 GATT decision that permits developed countries to grant preferential, non-reciprocal trade treatment to developing countries as a permanent exception to the most-favoured-nation rule.

The Eurozone sovereign-debt crisis was a 2009–2015 financial emergency in which several euro-area states faced unsustainable government borrowing costs and threatened the single currency's survival.

Exorbitant privilege denotes the economic and financial advantages the United States derives from the US dollar's role as the world's primary reserve and transaction currency.

GATT Article I enshrines the most-favoured-nation principle, requiring every WTO member to extend any trade advantage granted to one member unconditionally to all other members.

GATT Article III is the national treatment obligation requiring that imported goods, once across the border, be treated no less favourably than like domestic products in internal taxation and regulation.

GATT Article XXIV is the provision permitting WTO members to form customs unions and free-trade areas as exceptions to the most-favoured-nation obligation.

The Generalized System of Preferences is a non-reciprocal, non-discriminatory trade scheme under which developed countries grant tariff concessions on imports from developing countries.

A global value chain is the full sequence of cross-border activities — design, production, marketing, and distribution — through which firms fragment the making of a good or service across multiple countries.

The International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 is a US federal statute authorizing the President to regulate international commerce after declaring a national emergency tied to an unusual foreign threat.

International Relations is the academic discipline and field of practice studying political, economic, and strategic interactions among states, international organisations, and non-state actors.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control is a unit of the U.S. Treasury Department that administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions against targeted foreign states, entities, and individuals.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control is a U.S. Treasury Department agency that administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions against targeted foreign states, entities, and individuals.

The Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) is an Indian government scheme that disburses cash incentives to manufacturers as a percentage of incremental sales of goods made in India over a base year.

The Smithsonian Agreement was a December 1971 accord among the Group of Ten nations that devalued the US dollar against gold and realigned major currencies in a failed bid to rescue the Bretton Woods fixed-exchange-rate system.

Sovereign debt is the money a national government borrows, domestically or externally, by issuing bonds or contracting loans against its own credit and taxing power.

Trade is the voluntary exchange of goods, services, and capital across national or domestic boundaries, governed since 1995 by the World Trade Organization's multilateral rules.

The Triffin Dilemma is the structural conflict a reserve-currency issuer faces between supplying global liquidity through deficits and maintaining domestic confidence in its currency's value.

The USD 100 billion per year is the climate finance pledge by which developed countries committed to mobilise that sum annually by 2020 to support developing-country mitigation and adaptation.