Introduction: Poverty, Trade, and Regulatory Issues

The world has witnessed unprecedented technological and economic advances in recent times, yet much of the world's population does not share this prosperity. Poverty remains one of the most serious global problems. Despite considerable efforts by international organizations, governments, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the situation has not improved significantly, and nearly half of the world population lives below the poverty line. This calls for new approaches that could lead to solutions for poverty problems around the world. This chapter proposes a theoretical and regulatory framework for a new type of international trade to improve the economic status of populations in least developed countries (LDCs). This new type of trade is called “microtrade.” In this chapter, I use the term microtrade to describe international trade on a small scale, based primarily on manually produced products using small amounts of capital and low levels of technology available at a local level in LDCs. Microtrade is conceived as a means to raise income to reduce or eliminate poverty when no other conventional means of economic development is either available or sufficient to accomplish this.