Economic research and trade policy analysis
Prólogo
El comercio ha mejorado el nivel de vida de miles de millones de personas muchas de las cuales son mujeres. Numerosos datos empíricos demuestran que el comercio ha dado lugar a un aumento de la productividad una mayor competencia precios más bajos y un incremento de los ingresos y el bienestar. Sin embargo como ha puesto de manifiesto la pandemia de COVID-19 el comercio puede verse gravemente perturbado. Existe el riesgo de que a raíz de la crisis provocada por la COVID-19 se pierdan algunas de las ganancias económicas que han obtenido las mujeres gracias al comercio. Por consiguiente la cooperación es esencial para mantener condiciones que permitan una rápida recuperación y para crear un comercio más inclusivo y sostenible en el futuro.
Thailand
The politicization of trade policy-making in Thailand is arguably more pronounced than elsewhere in the world including at the global level where multilateral trade negotiations (MTNs) under the World Trade Organization (WTO) are currently stalled. Indeed the Thai case of trade policy quagmire is quite dramatic for having adversely impinged on the country’s body politic to the extent that a popularly elected government was ousted in a military coup and an anti-free trade agreement (FTA) bias worked its way into a new military-organized constitution contributing to a prolonged and protracted political crisis. That Thai trade policy has become increasingly politicized over the first decade of the twenty-first century is attributable to a number of dynamics some in parallel to trade policy experiences in the rest of the world others more specific to domestic circumstances.
Introduction
Au cours des dernières décennies Internet a fait irruption dans chaque recoin de notre vie des interactions sociales aux loisirs en passant par le travail et a fondamentalement remodelé nos économies en réduisant considérablement le coût d’acquisition et d’échange de l’information. Il a alimenté la révolution numérique modifiant radicalement notre façon de communiquer de consommer et de produire et il a profondément transformé le commerce international et ce qui est échangé par qui et de quelle façon.
Mexico
In the last quarter of a century trade policy in Mexico has undergone dramatic changes. After more than three decades dominated by an import substitution industrialization (ISI) strategy based on high trade barriers to protect the domestic market in the early 1980s Mexico launched an ambitious process of trade liberalization. The levels of protection were reduced first unilaterally as part of the process of economic reform and subsequently through the negotiation of bilateral and regional preferential trade agreements (PTAs) with countries in North America South America Europe and Asia.
Foreword
In the digital age a growing number of governments have adopted policies aimed at boosting growth through innovation and technological upgrading. The domestic economic fallout linked to the COVID-19 pandemic is leading countries to strengthen these policies. This report looks at these trends and at how trade and the WTO fit in. It shows that there is a significant role for international cooperation to make countries’ pursuit of such goals more effective while minimizing negative spill-overs from national policies.
Impacto del comercio en las mujeres y sus distintas funciones
Desde hace tres decenios el mundo está cada vez más integrado. El comercio de mercancías como proporción del producto interior bruto (PIB) aumentó de cerca del 43% en 1995 a casi el 60% en 2017. Asimismo los aranceles han ido disminuyendo desde el establecimiento del Acuerdo General sobre Aranceles Aduaneros y Comercio (GATT) en 1948. La liberalización unilateral y ocho rondas de negociaciones multilaterales han reducido considerablemente los aranceles aplicados por los Miembros de la Organización Mundial del Comercio (OMC). Los tipos de la nación más favorecida (NMF) aplicados han bajado de niveles superiores al 10% en 1995 a niveles ligeramente superiores al 7% en 2017 (gráfico 1.1). Los países que están abiertos al comercio internacional suelen crecer más rápidamente innovar mejorar la productividad y ofrecer mayores ingresos y más oportunidades a sus habitantes.
Executive summary
The World Trade Report 2005 begins with a brief review of salient trends in international trade focusing firstly on recent developments and then examining medium-term developments in the oil sector and the pharmaceutical sector. Section II of WTR 2005 contains the core topic of this year’s Report which is standards and trade in the context of the WTO. The Section looks first at the economics of standards and trade and then at a range of institutional and policy issues. This is followed by a discussion of standards in the multilateral trading system. Section III of the Report takes up three discrete and topical issues of relevance to international trade. The three thematic essays in this Section are on the use of quantitative economics in WTO dispute settlement trade in air transport services and offshoring services. The essay on the use of quantitative economic analysis in WTO dispute settlement procedures explains the kinds of quantitative techniques and econometric models that have been applied in various WTO legal disputes and discusses the use that was made of such analysis in a selected range of cases. The essay on trade in air transport services takes a close look at key characteristics of the industry and examines how it has evolved over time. The analysis also considers the economics of this sector and a number of issues relating to competition regulation governance and trade in air transport services. Finally the essay on offshoring services considers the economic characteristics of the activity its scope and implications and how it is relevant to the General Agreement on Trade in Services.
The future of Asia: Unleashing the power of trade and governance
Half a century ago the future of Asia looked quite bleak. Civil and regional conflict ravaged many parts of the region. China was still closed to the world and in the throes of its Cultural Revolution. India and Pakistan were recovering from wars Indonesia and the Philippines were under authoritarian rule and several Central Asian countries were mere shadow states of the former Soviet Union. Since then Asia has surprised the world: Japan and the rest of East Asia have rapidly become industrialised and successive years of high growth have been attained by other Asian countries notably China India and several countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. This growth has been driven in great part by rapidly expanding trade with the liberalisation of China in the late 1970s and of India in the 1990s greater integration among North-east and Southeast Asian countries and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Tendencias recientes en el comercio internacional
La economía mundial creció en 2004 el 4 por ciento la tasa anual de crecimiento más elevada en más de un decenio. Por otra parte el PIB mundial tuvo el año pasado una base regional más amplia que en los tres años anteriores lo que constituyó una base sólida para la aceleración del crecimiento del comercio mundial. El comercio mundial de mercancías aumentó en 2004 el 9 por ciento en términos reales (el mejor resultado anual desde 2000) y más del doble que la producción mundial (PIB medido a los tipos del mercado). Además el crecimiento del comercio superó con creces el promedio del crecimiento registrado durante el último decenio (véase el gráfico 1 y el cuadro 1).
Supply chains, upgrading and development
“Development” is a far-reaching term and the subjects of the reviewed literature vary by geographical and organisational coverage stage of socioeconomic development under study and perspective adopted. More specifically and substantively addressed is increased participation in global value chains including upgrading as applied to firms industries and regions. This is driven by both the business practitioner’s and policy maker’s perspectives and is addressed through the global value chain framework. In contrast to supply chains value chains provide a better macro-scale perspective on matters such as distribution of income and power across firm networks and the interlinkages between firms and their socioeconomic environments. Operationalisable typologies of upgrading and value chain governance reviewed here will be of interest to the business practitioner and policy maker. Our literature search also yields a niche body of literature on the subject of rural development and agriculture which is reviewed near the end of the chapter.
Export diversification and economic growth: The case of Mauritius
The acceleration of global trade in the latter half of the 20th century has seen patterns of trade vastly differing from those predicted by classical trade theories built around perfect competition comparative advantage and constant returns to scale (Krugman 1980). Based on Adam Smith’s concept of division of labour and specialization for economic growth and development and the Heckscher-Ohlin Samuelson (HOS) model of international trade countries should specialize in producing those goods in which they have a comparative advantage. Recent literature instead has found that countries appear to diversify in terms of production and exports as they grow.
Acknowledgements
This publication Trade and Food Standards has been jointly prepared by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Cómo determinan las limitaciones y oportunidades la función de las mujeres en el comercio
Las mujeres se podrían beneficiar del aumento del comercio pero se enfrentan a obstáculos que les impiden o dificultan el acceso a esas oportunidades. Estas limitaciones explican en parte por qué las mujeres trabajan en determinados sectores poseen y dirigen determinados tipos de empresas consumen determinados tipos de productos o adoptan determinadas decisiones en el seno de sus familias como se indica en el capítulo 1. El creciente protagonismo de los servicios en la economía y el comercio mundiales (en adelante denominado terciarización) el auge de las cadenas de valor mundiales (CVM) y la adopción de nuevas tecnologías crean nuevas y excelentes oportunidades para que las mujeres puedan comerciar más y aprovechar mejor los beneficios del comercio. Examinar estas tendencias desde una perspectiva de género permite ilustrar cómo pueden las mujeres obtener una mayor proporción de los beneficios que ofrece el comercio.
Institutions and policy issues
This Section explains how standardization and conformity assessment work in practice and describes the relevant characteristics of standardization and conformity assessment infrastructures in various regions of the world. It starts with a discussion of the standardization process and considers where standardization takes place how it is organized and who participates in the process. Subsection 2 discusses the organization of conformity assessment at the international regional and national levels and describes the ways in which conformity assessment requirements may impact on trade.
El comercio de servicios en el futuro
Esta sección pretende ofrecer algunas orientaciones sobre cómo evolucionará la estructura del comercio. Para comenzar se presentan mediante un enfoque novedoso las tendencias recientes de los costos del comercio relacionados con los servicios y se señalan los factores que afectan a esos costos. A continuación se examinan las principales tendencias futuras en cuanto a tecnología demografía ingresos y cambio climático para explicar de qué modo pueden influir estas en las decisiones de los países sobre con qué servicios e interlocutores comerciar así como sobre su forma de comerciar. Por último se cuantifica la posible repercusión de estas tendencias en el comercio de servicios empleando el Modelo de Comercio Mundial de la OMC.
Appendix
To investigate the state of the industry the authors conducted a quantitative survey to practitioners from banks fintech companies multilateral development banks industry associations trade governance bodies consultancies and trade policy experts. In total 105 responses were received.
Technical notes
WTO members are frequently referred to as “countries” although some members are not countries in the usual sense of the word but are officially “customs territories”. The definition of geographical and other groupings in this report does not imply an expression of opinion by the WTO Secretariat concerning the status of any country or territory the delimitation of its frontiers nor the rights and obligations of any WTO member in respect of WTO agreements. The colours boundaries denominations and classifications in the maps of the publication do not imply on the part of the WTO any judgement on the legal or other status of any territory or any endorsement or acceptance of any boundary.
SPS standards and international competitiveness in Africa: The case of senegal
Despite a steady decline in its share of GDP and exports the agricultural sector continues to play an important role in African economies and in Senegal in particular where it employs approximately 60 per cent of the labour force. It accounts for a quarter of national public investment but contributed only 6 per cent to GDP between 2000 and 2009 (Ministère de l’Economie et des Finances du Sénégal 2011). Horticulture is one of the promising sectors as can be observed not only from a rapid growth strategy but also from many national agricultural development strategies because of the vast range of products included and the high level of income it generates for producers especially in urban and suburban areas. In addition Senegal has both a favourable climate and a good geographical position for the export of tropical off-season products. These factors have enabled the country to increase the production and export of fruit and vegetables significantly. Horticultural production has experienced a boom over the last ten years increasing from about 150000 to 228000 metric tons between 1992 and 2000 and to 429000 metric tons in 2007 an increase of 5.5 per cent per year. In 2008 the production of vegetables (excluding potatoes and fresh tomatoes) recorded a growth rate of 8 per cent and the production of fruit experienced a growth rate of 81 per cent. Accordingly exports have increased from 6175 metric tons in 1995 to 9000 metric tons in 2000 and 31000 metric tons in 2009 an increase of about 5.5 per cent per year. The main target markets for exports are neighbouring countries and the European Union (Ndoye-Niane 2004; Senegal National Agency of Statistics and Demography 2006–2010).