Economic research and trade policy analysis

En esta sección se explica cómo funcionan en la práctica la normalización y la evaluación de la conformidad y se describen las características pertinentes de las infraestructuras de normalización y de evaluación de la conformidad en distintas regiones del mundo. Primero se hace un análisis del proceso de normalización y se estudia dónde se lleva a cabo la normalización, cómo está organizada y quiénes participan en el proceso. La subsección 2 trat Read More

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the SME Finance Forum and the World Bank Group estimate the entire MSME finance gap to be close to US$ 5 trillion, hindering the ability of MSMEs to grow. This gap, however, is not due to a lack of available funds. A 2019 report by the International Trade Centre (ITC) indicated that “in 2018 global funds held US$ 1 trillion of cash-in-hand equity capital that was seeking investment opportunities”. Of particular con Read More

Le Rapport sur le commerce mondial de cette année examine le rôle du commerce dans un monde caractérisé, depuis plusieurs décennies, par l’interdépendance croissante des pays. Cette interdépendance, appelée aujourd’hui mondialisation, est un phénomène complexe aux multiples facettes, qui implique une forte interaction politique, sociale et économique aux niveaux national et international. Rares sont ceux qui contesteraient les avanta Read More

The high economic growth rates that have been achieved by many countries in Asia have led to a contemporary world economy that is multipolar. This has had repercussions for the WTO, as well as for other multilateral organisations. The deadlock in the WTO’s Doha Round has led the United States and the European Union increasingly to turn their attention towards the negotiation of preferential trade agreements, including so-called ‘mega-regional’ Read More

Global value chains (GVCs) have been a feature of the international economic architecture for many years, but scholarly interest in the phenomenon is more recent. Today that interest is intense, emanating from an array of academic disciplines as well as from the policy world. This volume, jointly produced by the Fung Global Institute and the World Trade Organization, is an attempt to capture the core features and themes of the exploding literature on GVCs Read More

No doubt, the world looks a little different today than it did at the end of 2019 when we first published the Periodic Table of DLT in Trade. A natural year’s worth of progression has been both accelerated and in some areas stunted by the forces of the COVID-19 pandemic, the widespread and long-lasting implications of which still remain unknown.

What is the perspective from the podium? what are the challenges that face the chairperson of an accession working party? The role of a chairperson of an accession working party is tough and challenging, and the functions of a chairperson can only be successfully exercised if he or she has the trust and confidence of parties involved. This role is best understood as that of a referee, assisted by the Secretariat. The accession of the Russian Federati Read More

There is widespread evidence that countries use trade policy to protect their workers. Sector-level tariffs typically correlate positively with sector wages and employment. This chapter examines the mirror question of how tariffs of other countries of the world affect industry wages at home. To answer this question, we rely on an industry-level analysis of wages in a sample of developing and developed countries spanning from 1976 to 2004. The effect of trade Read More

Globalization and the opening of markets in developing economies to trade is believed to have affected informal employment in these countries. This chapter summarizes the theoretical arguments for such a link and presents the relevant empirical evidence. In particular, it asks the questions: What roles do trade reforms and trade expansion play in explaining changes in the share of informal employment? How does trade opening affect the relative wage of Read More

Trade liberalization policies affect the domestic economy through their impact on prices of goods and services. Consequently, these policies also can affect average productivity and lead to industrial restructuring. The main goal of this research is to estimate the distributional effects of trade policy at the micro level using household survey data, and to determine whether trade liberalization affected different groups of poor people differently. To our knowl Read More

The general-purpose nature of information technology (IT) means that its widespread use in other economic sectors helps induce organizational and technological innovation throughout the economy. Innovation in IT itself has a magnified effect on economic productivity.

The World Trade Report 2006 begins with a short summary of salient trends in international trade based on the Secretariat’s earlier Report issued in April. We also provide brief analytical commentaries on certain topical trade issues, which this year cover recent trends in trade in textiles and clothing, an examination of the evolution of international royalty and fee payments, developments in the trade of least-developed countries, and an analysis of the effects Read More

Trade has improved the living standards of billions of individuals, many of whom are women. Ample empirical evidence shows that trade has led to higher productivity, greater competition, lower prices, higher incomes, and improved welfare. As the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed, however, trade can be seriously disrupted. There is a risk that some of the economic gains women have reaped through trade could be reversed by the COVID-19 crisis. Read More

While the term “business model” might seem ubiquitous today, its use only arose in the 1990s with the information and communications technology (ICT) revolution. Since then, the business model literature has advanced definitions and conceptualisations that describe, and prescribe, a range of supply chain architectures. In the age of network competition, the business model concept now rests upon the focal unit of the supply chain and no longer upo Read More

Trade is a major source of employment. Nevertheless, trade has recently been caught in the crossfire in discussions around the decline of manufacturing employment and the polarization of labor markets in advanced economies. In this chapter we examine what the academic literature has to say on the relationship between trade and labor markets, with a specific focus on studies with a value chain perspective. We find that trade has only modest Read More

Les signes d’une forte dégradation de l’économie mondiale sont devenus manifestes au second semestre de 2008 et dans les premiers mois de 2009, avec la contraction des flux commerciaux et la chute de la production, d’abord dans les pays développés, puis dans les pays en développement. Bien que le commerce mondial ait augmenté de 2 pour cent en volume en 2008, sa croissance s’est essoufflée au cours des six derniers mois de l’année, pou Read More

Le présent chapitre porte sur les efforts des gouvernements, de la société civile, du secteur privé et des institutions multilatérales concernant le commerce et l’autonomisation économique des femmes. L’accent y est mis sur les mesures qui pourraient être les plus efficaces pour ouvrir les marchés aux femmes et renforcer leur capacité de faire du commerce. Les risques que présente le commerce pour les femmes en tant que travailleuses sont égaleme Read More

Les Membres de l'OMC sont souvent désignés sous le nom de « pays », bien que certains ne soient pas des pays au sens habituel du terme mais, officiellement, des « territoires douaniers ». La définition des groupements géographiques ou autres, dans le présent rapport, n'implique de la part du Secrétariat aucune prise de position quant au statut d'un pays ou territoire, au tracé de ses frontières ou aux droits et obligations des Membres de Read More

Analysis of the role of trade in contributing to poverty reduction needs to go beyond its impact on economic growth. As discussed in the preceding chapter, economic growth will remain the key driver of poverty reduction globally, and trade will continue to be a critical driver of growth. Nevertheless, in the areas in which extreme poverty is now concentrated — South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa — with predicted growth more than 370 million people in these Read More

Economic progress involves economic disruption, and there has always been an inherent and unavoidable trade-off between the benefits of growth, on the one hand, and the cost of adjustment, on the other. Today is no exception. The expansion of the global economy – spurred by technological advances and market opening – is enhancing the welfare and improving the living conditions of billions of people around the world. But it is also resulting in econ Read More

La croissance de la production et du commerce dans le monde a connu au second semestre de 2003 une vive accélération qui s’est traduite par une hausse moyenne de 2,5 pour cent du PIB mondial et de 4,5 pour cent des exportations de marchandises. Il s’agit d’une amélioration plus forte que prévu par rapport à l’année précédente, même si la croissance du commerce est restée inférieure à la moyenne enregistrée durant les années 90. Ces résultats an Read More

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have become so prominent in recent years that they permeate much of the discourse on international trade. The current scale of RTA proliferation is unprecedented both in quantitative and qualitative terms. A bewildering range of geographical configurations and varying policy content characterize the new agreements. This trend is likely to continue. The embrace of RTAs by virtually every trading nation carries systemic i Read More

In the past two decades, profound changes in the structure of the global economy have reshaped global production and trade and altered the organization of industries and national economies. The geographic fragmentation of industries, where value is added in multiple countries before products make their way to consumers, has been accompanied by vast improvements in the functional integration of these far-flung activities, creating what have come to be Read More

El Informe sobre el comercio mundial 2019 ha sido elaborado bajo la responsabilidad general de Xiaozhun Yi, Director General Adjunto de la OMC, y Robert Koopman, Director de la División de Estudios Económicos y Estadística. El informe de este año ha sido coordinado por Emmanuelle Ganne y Stela Rubínová (División de Estudios Económicos y Estadística) y por Antonia Carzaniga (División de Comercio de Servicios e Inversión). Los principales autores del Read More

This section examines the role of trade in services in helping countries to achieve rapid and inclusive growth. Section C.1 discusses and attempts to quantify how services trade benefits the economy and promotes growth. Section C.2 discusses the role trade in services plays in enhancing domestic firms’ competitiveness, not only in the services sector, but also in manufacturing. Section C.3 considers how services trade promotes inclusiveness in a n Read More

En los últimos meses el comercio ha sufrido su mayor contracción desde el decenio de 1930, como consecuencia del considerable deterioro económico global provocado, en primer lugar, por el colapso de importantes instituciones financieras. El crecimiento del comercio se expresará este año en cifras fuertemente negativas, y es poco probable que antes de 2010 vuelva a registrarse un crecimiento sostenido. Esta adversidad está poniendo a pru Read More

El mundo, tal como lo conocemos, ha sido definido por las innovaciones tecnológicas. Muchas personas han acogido la aparición de una nueva tecnología, la cadena de bloques (una tecnología de registro distribuido), a la que consideran el próximo gran factor de cambio, con entusiasmo y optimismo. La cadena de bloques, que permite compartir registros digitales y datos de manera segura, transparente e inalterable sin necesidad de depender de un único t Read More

Businesses and households face substantial idiosyncratic and aggregate economic risk. As a general principle, economic risk for businesses reflects the myriad of factors that impact the profitability of the business, while for individuals economic risk reflects the myriad of factors that impact the earnings and employment outcomes of household members. While aggregate risk gets most of the headlines, the volatility of profitability and income that an in Read More

Over the last 3 decades, several developing countries have liberalized their trade regimes. This may have happened either due partially to conditionalities imposed by international organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund in response to emergency requests for loans, in the context of a country’s accession to the World Trade Organization, or as a result of the signature of a preferential trade agreement. In many cases, the reforms may hav Read More

El transporte aéreo, al igual que los demás servicios de transporte, está relacionado con el comercio internacional de dos maneras claras. En primer lugar, el transporte aéreo es objeto de comercio como servicio por derecho propio. En segundo lugar, es un servicio intermediario fundamental para muchos otros tipos de comercio, tanto en la esfera de los bienes como en la de los servicios (por ejemplo, en el turismo). Son muchos los estudios en los que se Read More

Part I described the system of food standards and trade rules created by members for members. With such a system in place, what is then required to keep it working and fit for purpose? And how can members take advantage of the benefits it has to offer?

The intangibility of services makes them analytically and statistically elusive. Systematic efforts to deepen our understanding of the economic role played by services – particularly at the international level – have only occurred in the last thirty years. These efforts have intensified recently with the increased presence of global value chains, where services fulfill a vital and complex role.

Since the 1980s many developed and developing countries have experienced increases in within-country inequality. The growing income gap has coincided with the period of increasing exposure of countries to globalization through increased flows of goods, services, capital and labour across international borders. These developments have instigated a large debate in the academic and policy circles as to whether globalization is responsible for the g Read More

A crucial step towards end-to-end trade digitalization is creating an ecosystem that allows for seamless exchanges of data between existing platforms. This requires developing and implementing globally accepted digital standards for trade. As these initiatives play a crucial role in shaping the landscape within which each DLT-in-trade project operates, standardization initiatives have been included in more detail in this updated version. To this end, these in Read More

The World Trade Report 2021 was prepared under the general responsibility and guidance of Anabel González, WTO Deputy Director-General, and Robert Koopman, Director of the Economic Research and Statistics Division. The report was coordinated by Eddy Bekkers and José-Antonio Monteiro. The authors of the report are Marc Auboin, Marc Bacchetta, Francesco Bellelli, Cosimo Beverelli, Eddy Bekkers, Emmanuelle Ganne, John Hancock, Katharina Lae Read More