Trade liberalization has long been expected to contribute to poverty reduction. The economy of Thailand provides an excellent case to study this relationship because its economy has structurally transformed in the past few decades through the export-oriented growth strategies. The purpose of this article is to examine the relative effect of Thailand’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 on poverty reduction, using a unique data set compiled from labour force survey and tariff data. Variation in production composition across provinces allows us to examine a relative impact of such trade reform. Using the instrument variable estimation, we found that provinces in which employers are concentrated in industries exposed to a greater tariff reduction experience more rapid poverty reduction and more income growth than less exposed provinces. This impact on poverty and income is also more pronounced in urban areas. We hypothesize that labour mobility is a potential channel underpinning this effect.

This study has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project Structural transformation-the old and new paths to economic development.

Over the past few decades, Thailand has made progress in expanding access to basic education, resulting in an increase in literacy rates and narrowing gaps in school attendance between socio-economic groups. This paper surveys recent developments in Thailand's basic education with an emphasis on the learning outcomes of Thai students, the determinants of such outcomes, and the challenges faced by the basic education system. The paper finds that despite the significant amount of resources spent on education and the fact that the quality of the workforce is crucial for the country's current stage of economic development, students' learning outcomes are low and have not improved significantly in either national or international assessments. The performance of junior secondary school students in the national examinations has declined, especially in mathematics and science. While the performance of senior secondary school students has improved slightly over the same period, the mean results for core subjects (mathematics, science, and English) were less than 50. This worrying figure is worsened by inequality in education quality across regions, since the performance of secondary school students is lower in poorer, remote regions. In addition, according to the results of the international assessments, Thai students are performing below the international average in core subjects. The paper argues that such poor learning outcomes are presumably due to two main reasons: the role of small school, and inefficient resource allocation for education in public spending. Key challenges in Thailand's basic education include the need to expand the supply of human capital to avoid the middle-income trap and the aging society. This is a pivotal period in Thailand's economic development. Educational reform is needed to ensure high-quality basic education for all.

Policy makers in several countries are seeking to increase domestic value added in export. The purpose of this paper is to examine this emphasis in trade and industrial policy in the era of global value chains. The formal empirical analysis adopts Thailand as a case study, and employs a mixture of input–output analysis and panel econometrics to model the relationship between domestic value added and two export performances indicators (net-export earnings and export-led income). The findings from a system GMM estimator suggest that industries with greater domestic value added do not perform better than those with lower domestic value added. There is no significant relationship between domestic value added and net-export earnings and export-induced income. However, there is evidence that greater participation in global production networks significantly increases export performances. The upshot is that emphasis placed on domestic value added may run counter developmental gains from participation in global value chains.

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