Trade is the exchange activity of wealth, goods, services, knowledge, money, etc. between two or more partners, and can receive a certain value (in cash through the price) or by row goods and services such as in the form of barter trade (barter). In this process, vendors who provide the wealth and goods and services . the buyer, the buyer in exchange for the seller to pay a certain equivalent value. | Trade and Poverty Is There a Connection L Alan Winters1 A. Introduction The issue Openness and trade liberalization are now seen almost universally as key components of the national policy cocktail required for economic growth and aggregate economic well-being. They are believed to have been central to the remarkable growth of industrial countries since the mid-20th century and to the examples of successful economic development since around 1970. The continued existence of widespread and abject poverty on the other hand represents perhaps the greatest failure of the contemporary global economy and the greatest challenge it faces as we enter the 21st century. This essay asks whether the two phenomena are connected. Specifically it asks whether the process of trade liberalization or the maintenance of a liberal trade regime could have caused the poverty that so disfigures modern life or whether in fact it has contributed to its alleviation. Extreme poverty living on say 1 a day per head is basically restricted to the developing countries and so I focus exclusively on them. I also focus largely on the effects of those countries own trade policies . how their own openness or trade liberalization might affect their own poverty. In almost all circumstances countries are more affected by their own trade policies than by their partners and of course it is the former over which they have most influence. As will become plain however most issues concerning partners policies or shifts in world markets can be analyzed using the same tools as I discuss below for countries own policies. The approach If trade liberalization and poverty were both easily measured and if there were many historical instances in which liberalization could be identified as the main economic shock it would be simple to derive simple empirical regularities linking the two. Unfortunately none of these conditions is met and so we are reduced to examining fragmentary evidence on small parts of the .
