| G-7 | A group of seven major industrialized countries whose heads of state have met annually since 1976 in summit meetings to discuss economic and political issues. The seven are United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy (plus the EU). |
| G-8 | The G-7 plus Russia, which have met as a full economic and political summit since 1998. |
| G-10 | Group of Ten. |
| G-20 | 1. An international forum of finance
ministers and central bank governors from 19 countries and the EU,
plus the IMF
and World
Bank. Created in 1999 by the finance ministers of the G-7, it meets
annually to discuss financial and economic concerns among industrialed
economies and emerging markets. 2. A group of developing countries established Aug. 20, 2003 that joined together in the Canc?nisterial of the WTO's Doha Round in order to negotiate collectively with the U.S. and E.U., especially seeking the elimination of developed-country agricultural subsidies. Membership in the group has fluctuated, but the name G-20 now seems to have stuck. The group has been led by Brazil, other important members including Argentina, China, India, and South Africa. |
| G-24 | A group of developing countries established in 1971 with the aim of taking positions on monetary and development finance issues. |
| G-77 | A coalition of developing countries within the United Nations, established in 1964 at the end of the first session of UNCTAD, intended to articulate and promote the collective economic interests of its members and enhance their negotiating capacity. Originally with 77 members, it now (in 2001) has 133. |
| Gains from trade | The net benefits that country's experience as a result of lowering import tariffs and otherwise liberalizing trade. |
| Gains from trade theorem | The theoretical proposition that (in the absence of distortions) there will be gains from trade for any economy that moves from autarky to free trade, as well as for a small open economy and for the world as a whole if tariffs are reduced appropriately. Due to Samuelson (1939, 1962). |
| Game | A theoretical construct in game theory in which players select actions and the payoffs depend on the actions of all players. |
| Game theory | The modeling of strategic interactions among agents, used in economic models where the numbers of interacting agents (firms, governments, etc.) is small enough that each has a perceptible influence on the others. |
| Gastarbeiter | Guest worker. |
| GATS | General Agreement on Trade in Services |
| GATT | General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade |
| GATT Articles | The individual sections of the GATT agreement, conventionally indentified by their Roman numerals. Most were originally drafted in 1947, but are still included in the WTO. |
| GATT-Speak | Variation on GATT-think. |
| GATT-Think | A somewhat derogatory term for the language of GATT negotiations, in which exports are good, imports are bad, and a reduction in a barrier to imports is a concession. Similar to mercantilism. Due to Krugman (1991b). |
| GCC | Gulf Cooperation Council |
| GDP | Gross domestic product. |
| GDP deflator | The deflator for GDP, thus the ratio of nominal GDP to real GDP (usually multiplied, as with a price index, by 100). |
| General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade | A multilateral treaty entered into in 1948 by the intended members of the International Trade Organization, the purpose of which was to implement many of the rules and negotiated tariff reductions that would be overseen by the ITO. With the failure of the ITO to be approved, the GATT became the principal institution regulating trade policy until it was subsumed within the WTO in 1995. |
| General Agreement on Trade in Services | The agreement, negotiated in the Uruguay Round that brings international trade in services into the WTO. It provides for countries to provide national treatment to foreign service providers and for them to select and negotiate the service sectors to be covered under GATS. |
| General equilibrium | Equality of supply and demand in all markets of an economy simultaneously. The number of markets does not have to be large. The simplest Ricardian model has markets only for two goods and one factor, labor, but this is a general equilibrium model. Contrasts with partial equilibrium. |
| Generalized System of Preferences | Tariff preferences for developing countries, by which developed countries let certain manufactured and semi-manufactured imports from developing countries enter at lower tariffs than the same products from developed countries. |
| Geneticalliy modified organism | Plants or animals (or products thereof) whose genetic makeup has been determined or altered by genetic engineering. Trade in GMOs has been the source of disagreement and controversy between the US and the EU. |
| Geography | See New Economic Geography. |
| Giffen good | A good that is so inferior and so heavily consumed at low incomes that the demand for it rises when its price rises. The reason is that the price increase lowers income sufficiently that the positive income effect (because it is inferior) outweighs the negative substitution effect. |
| Gini Coefficient | A measure of income inequality within a population, ranging from zero for complete equality, to one if one person has all the income. It is defined as the area between the Lorenz Curve and the diagonal, divided by the total area under the diagonal. |
| Global competitiveness | Competitiveness, applied internationally. |
| Global optimum | An allocation that is better, by some criterion, than all others possible; optimum optimorum. |
| Global quota | An import quota that specifies the permitted quantity of imports from all sources combined. This may be without regard to country of origin, and thus available on a first-come-first-served basis, or it may be allocated to specific suppliers. |
| Global Trade Analysis Project | A project based at Purdue University, providing a data base and CGE modeling tools for analysis of global trade. |
| Globalization | 1. The increasing world-wide integration
of markets for goods, services and capital that attracted special
attention in the late 1990s. 2. Also used to encompass a variety of other changes that were perceived to occur at about the same time, such as an increased role for large corporations (MNCs) in the world economy and increased intervention into domestic policies and affairs by international institutions such as the IMF, WTO, and World Bank. 3. Among countries outside the United States, especially developing countries, the term sometimes refers to the domination of world economic affairs and commerce by the United States. |
| GMO | Genetically modified organism. |
| Gnomes of Zurich | Term used by the British Labor government to refer to Swiss bankers and financiers who engaged in currency speculation that forced the devaluation of the British pound in 1964. |
| GNP | Gross national product. |
| Gold Exchange Standard | A monetary system that sought to restore features of the Gold Standard in the 1920s and again in the Bretton Woods System, while economizing on gold. Instead of money being backed directly by gold, central banks issued liabilities against foreign currency assets (mostly U.S. dollars under Bretton Woods) that were in turn backed by gold. |
| Gold Standard | A monetary system in which both the value of a unit of the currency and the quantity of it in circulation are specified in terms of gold. If two currencies are both on the gold standard, then the exchange rate between them is approximately determined by their two prices in terms of gold. |
| Good | A product that can be produced, bought, and sold, and that has a physical identity. Sometimes said, inaccurately, to be anything that "can be dropped on your foot" or, also inaccurately, to be "visible." Contrasts with service. Trade in goods is much easier to measure than trade in services, and thus much more thoroughly documented and analyzed. |
| Government debt | The amount that a country's government has borrowed as a result of budget deficits, usually by issuing government bonds or, in developing countries, from international financial institutions. Often called the national debt. |
| Government procurement | Purchase of goods and services by government and by state-owned enterprises. Transparency in government procurement is one of the Singapore Issues. |
| Government procurement practice | The methods by which units of government and state-owned enterprises determine from whom to purchase goods and services. When these methods include a preference for domestic firms, they constitute an NTB. Subject of a Tokyo Round Code, later a WTO plurilateral agreement. |
| Graduation | Termination of a country's eligibility for GSP tariff preferences on the grounds that it has progressed sufficiently, in terms of per capita income or another measure, that it is no longer in need to special and differential treatment. |
| Grandfather clause | A provision in an agreement, including the GATT but not the WTO, that allows signatories to keep certain of their previously existing laws that otherwise would violate the agreement. |
| Gravity equation | An estimated equation of the gravity model. |
| Gravity model | A model of the flows of bilateral trade based on analogy with the law of gravity in physics: Tij = AYiYj /Dij , where Tij is exports from country i to country j, Yi,Yj are their national incomes, Dij is the distance between them, and A is a constant. Other constants as exponents and other variables are often included. Due independently to Tinbergen (1962) and Pöyhönen (1963). |
| Gray area measure | A measure whose conformity with existing rules in unclear, such as a VER under the GATT prior to the WTO. |
| Gray market | Refers to goods that are sold for a price lower than, or through a distributor different than, that intended by the manufacturer. Most commonly, goods that are intended by their manufacturer for one national market that are bought there, exported, and sold in another national market. |
| Green box | Category of subsidies permitted under the WTO Agriculture Agreement; includes those not directed at particular products, direct income support for farmers unrelated to production or prices, subsidies for environmental protection and regional development. |
| Green exchange rate | An exchange rate used within the EU's Common Agricultural Policy to convert subsidy and support payments into local currencies, avoiding the variability of the rate set in the exchange market. |
| Green field investment | FDI that involves construction of a new plant, rather then the purchase of an existing plant or firm. Contrasts with brown field investment. |
| Green room group | A group of GATT/WTO member countries -- including the larger members and selected smaller and less developed ones -- that have met together during negotiations (origially in a green room at WTO Geneva headquarters) to agree among themselves, before taking decisions to the full membership for the required consensus. |
| Gross domestic product | The total value of new goods and services produced in a given year within the borders of a country, regardless of by whom. It is "gross" in the sense that it does not deduct depreciation of previously produced capital, in contrast to NDP. |
| Gross international reserves | International reserves, without any deduction for the fact that some of them may have been borrowed. Contrasts with net international reserves. |
| Gross national income | National income plus capital consumption allowance. |
| Gross national product | The total value of new goods and services produced in a given year by a country's domestically owned factors of production, regardless of where. It is "gross" in the sense that, in contrast to NNP, it does not deduct depreciation of previously produced capital. |
| Gross output | The total output of a firm, industry, or economy without deducting intermediate inputs. For a firm or industry, this is larger than its value added which is net of its own intermediate inputs. For an economy, gross output is greater than net output, which deducts the amount of the good itself used as an intermediate input. |
| Gross substitutes | Two goods are gross substitutes if a rise in the price of one causes and increase in demand for the other. |
| Group of Seven (or Eight) | G-7 (or G-8) |
| Group of Ten | A group of ten countries, members of the IMF, that together with Switzerland agreed to make resources available outside their IMF quotas. Since 1963 the governors of the G10 central banks have meet on the occassion of the bimonthly BIS meetings. |
| Group of Seventyseven | G-77. |
| Growth | See economic growth. |
| Growth accounting | Decomposition of the sources of economic growth into the contributions from increases in capital, labor, and other factors. What remains, called the Solow residual, is usually attributed to technology. |
| Grubel-Lloyd index | The measure of the intra-industry trade suggested by Grubel and Lloyd (1975). For an industry i with exports Xi and imports Mi the index is I = [(Xi+Mi) - |Xi- Mi|]100/(Xi+Mi). This is the fraction of total trade in the industry, Xi+Mi, that is accounted for by IIT (times 100). |
| GSP | Generalized System of Preferences |
| GTAP | Global Trade Analysis Project |
| Guest worker | A foreign worker who is permitted to enter a country temporarily in order to take a job for which there is shortage of domestic labor. |
| Gulf Cooperation Council | An agreement among six countries of Persian Gulf region -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates -- in 1981 with the aim of coordinating and integrating their economic policies. |