Economic research and trade policy analysis

International trade economists have long been interested in understanding the distributional implications of globalization or trade liberalization or product market competition. One of the crucial aspects of such distributional effects, which have received a lot of attention, especially from the 1990s onward, is how such forces divide the labor pie into skilled (or nonproduction) and unskilled (or production) workers. In other words, does an increase in trade part Read More

Desde sus comienzos, el sistema internacional de comercio ha estado configurado por una mezcla de principios y pragmatismo. Las relaciones comerciales no pueden determinarse exclusivamente sobre la base de simples principios puros definidos y acordados en los comienzos. En la determinación de las posiciones adoptadas por los gobiernos intervienen inevitablemente consideraciones prácticas y políticas y expresiones particulares del interés na Read More

Le présent rapport a pour but d’améliorer la compréhension des effets du commerce et des politiques commerciales sur l’égalité hommesfemmes, et de fournir aux responsables politiques des données attestant les avantages du commerce pour les femmes, ainsi que des solutions possibles. Le cadre conceptuel retenu montre les différents canaux de transmission par lesquels le commerce et les politiques commerciales peuvent avoir une incide 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 d Read More

This report has addressed four fundamental issues relating to natural resources trade. The first is how key economic features of natural resources and the manner of their exchange influence patterns of trade for this class of goods. Second, we have examined how far the absence of trade barriers provides an efficient mechanism for ensuring access to natural resources and their long-run sustainability. The third issue concerns the incentives that govern Read More

The potential for productivity growth to generate higher incomes makes it a natural and important consideration for decision-makers. Productivity is the only driver of income growth that is unlimited, as opposed to resource exploitation or increases in population and labour force participation, each of which faces natural limits. The continuing need to stimulate productivity growth rightly remains at the forefront of government policy, and is a key priority of t Read More

Over the past twenty years, the rules-based global economy has been subject to a dynamic process of transformation. The trading environment has been characterized by shifts in the balance of economic power, emerging structures and rapid changes in global and regional alliances. Since its establishment in 1995, the WTO has sought to adapt to these global trends. The 2017 Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), the 2015 Nairobi Decisions on Agriculture Read More

En esta sección se estudia la transformación del comercio internacional que se está produciendo debido a las nuevas tecnologías, que están creando nuevas oportunidades para conseguir un sistema de comercio más inclusivo y están planteando nuevos desafíos. Al comienzo de la sección se examina la influencia de las tecnologías digitales en los costos del comercio internacional. A continuación, se analizan los cambios que las tecnologías digitales causan e Read More

El Informe del Comercio Mundial 2006 comienza con un breve resumen de las tendencias más destacadas del comercio internacional, basado en un Informe anterior de la Secretaría publicado en el mes de abril. También ofrecemos breves comentarios analíticos sobre algunas cuestiones comerciales de actualidad, que este año se refieren a las recientes tendencias en el comercio de los textiles y el vestido, un examen de la evolución de los pagos Read More

Over the last fifteen years or so the world trading system has witnessed the dramatic emergence and rise of regional or preferential trading agreements (RTAs/PTAs). This appears to be a significant shift away from the principle of multilateralism that the world trading system has been built around since the Second World War. There are a number of posited reasons for this emergence of regionalism, which between them suggest that liberalizing trade Read More

Trade policy-making is a complex affair. In all countries a host of factors influence the outcome, with the mix varying according to domestic circumstances and the relationship of the country concerned with the global economy. As the introductory chapter of this book attests, strictly state-centric explanations regarding how trade policy decisions are made are no longer sufficient in a world where international trade negotiations increasingly impinge on d Read More

Over the past 20 years, the ITA has led to the wider use of new technology by cutting the costs of key ICT goods. The ITA expansion further opens up trade on 201 new-generation IT products and technology.

Although Morocco is one of the main beneficiaries of Aid for Trade (AFT) – the first in the Maghreb and among the top ten in the world – researchers and national academic experts have not shown much interest in it.

WTO obligations, including notification requirements, and specific accession commitments are complex. Most of them become effective from the date of WTO membership. From a centralized accession process, new members now suddenly have to adapt to a decentralized WTO procedures and participate in parallel in its multiple bodies. The twenty years of post-accession experience of Article XII members suggests that many, especially least-develope Read More

La définition des ressources naturelles donnée dans la sous-section 1 est suffisante pour bon nombre d’analyses, mais une définition statistique plus précise est nécessaire pour traiter de façon cohérente les données sur les flux commerciaux, analysées dans la sous-section 2. Dans le cas des produits non exportés, une conception plus large des ressources naturelles est nécessaire. Cet appendice donne des précisions sur les différentes définitions po Read More

The starting point for this study is that appropriately designed and sequenced trade liberalization measures and a well crafted set of trade rules can make a positive contribution to growth and development. But the extent of that contribution also depends on other policies. The notion of coherence has been deployed in this study to characterize a situation in which relevant policies are pulling together in the same direction. In a world of multiple policy Read More

This chapter posits that leaving WTO accession in the hands of trade experts or commercial specialists within the acceding government can be unwise. Accession to the WTO goes far beyond the remit of the trade, commerce and/or foreign ministry, and even beyond the responsibilities of the minister. In order to conclude an accession, what is required of the acceding government will involve many, if not most, ministries, call upon governmental ag Read More

Women and Trade: The Role of Trade in Promoting Gender Equality is a joint report by the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Maria Liungman and Nadia Rocha from the World Bank and José-Antonio Monteiro and Roberta Piermartini from the WTO coordinated the report. The team is grateful for the guidance and support of our World Bank colleagues—Caroline Freund, Global Director, Trade, Investment and Competitiveness; Will Read More

This chapter takes stock of the recent academic literature on accessions. It focuses only on the analytical work published since 2000 in books, academic journals and working papers by key WTO scholars across the world. These contributions are related to the procedural, legal, economic and institutional aspects of WTO accessions, and to the proposals for their reform. Country-specific studies, research on the impact of accessions on individual ind Read More

La présente section examine comment la coopération commerciale internationale peut aider les gouvernements du monde entier à exploiter les technologies numériques et à saisir les nouvelles possibilités commerciales qu’elles créeront pour les entreprises, grandes et petites. La section D.1 résume les principales possibilités et les principaux défis qui découlent de l’expansion du commerce numérique. La section D.2 donne des exemples des p Read More

En la presente sección se examina la reglamentación internacional del comercio de recursos naturales. Primero, se hace una exposición general del marco jurídico de la OMC y un breve examen del encaje de los recursos naturales en ese marco. En esta sección no se pretende hacer un estudio exhaustivo de todas las normas de la OMC que puedan estar relacionadas con el comercio de recursos naturales, sino sólo de aquellas que sean especialmente Read More

This volume is a joint project of the International Labour Office and the Secretariat of the World Trade Organization. The International Chamber of Commerce Research Foundation provided funding, for which we would like to express our appreciation. This work follows up on two prior joint publications by the ILO and the WTO Secretariats – a review of the literature on trade and employment in 2007 and a report on the linkages between trade and informal empl Read More

Estimated at US$36 billion and employing over four million people, the Indian health care sector is one of the largest service sectors in the economy today. With a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15 per cent, the Indian health care sector is expected to reach US$280 billion by 2020. A 2003 report titled India’s New Opportunity: 2020, prepared jointly by the All India Management Association, Boston Consulting Group and the Confederation of Indian Read More

Natural resources represent a significant and growing share of world trade, and properly managed, can provide a variety of products that contribute greatly to the quality of human life. They also present particular challenges for policy makers.

For many developing states which have experienced a substantial decline in their share of world trade and global value added, Aid for Trade (AFT) initiatives have become a critical source of support in a context where these countries suffer from both market and government failure. As such, the key issue is whether AFT programmes, as currently configured, are the right policy instrument or set of instruments to address the weak participation of devel Read More

Trade can be more complicated than we think. What happens when two countries define the same product differently or if they set out different criteria to check that a product is safe? Let us think, for example, of the inconvenience as a traveller in havin 15 different types of electrical outlet plugs in the world, or the enormous infrastructure investment required for train cargo and passengers to travel across the border between two countries that have diffe Read More

The expansion of global output and trade gained considerable momentum in the second half of 2003 resulting in an annual average increase of world GDP and world merchandise exports of 2.5 per cent and 4.5 per cent respectively. These changes represent stronger than expected improvements when compared with the preceding year although trade growth remained below the average rate recorded in the 1990s. These annual results were neg Read More

El progreso tecnológico ha moldeado siempre la estructura del sistema de comercio mundial. La tecnología no es solo un factor determinante de los costos del comercio, sino que también define qué productos se pueden comercializar a través de las fronteras e influye en las tendencias de la ventaja comparativa.

Le Rapport sur le commerce mondial 2009 porte essentiellement sur certaines mesures contingentes auxquelles les Membres de l’OMC peuvent recourir lors de l’ importation et de l’exportation de marchandises. Le cadre juridique de ces mesures est beaucoup moins développé dans le domaine du commerce des services, mais il est également examiné.

Product standards specify or pin down the characteristics of a product. These characteristics can include design, size, weight, safety, energy and environmental performance, interoperability, material, and even the process of production. Examples of standards include the dimensions of freight containers and of screw threads; safety performance of seat belts, air bags and medical devices; pasteurization of milk; and protocols that allow c Read More

The use of global input-output tables, and the creation of Trade in Value-Added (TiVA) statistics, has greatly improved our understanding of the fragmentation of global production through value chains. However, their application requires a number of assumptions that, in practice, typically understate the degree of interconnectedness. TiVA estimates implicitly assume identical production functions across firms within an industry, when in reality production fun Read More

The purpose of this Section is to assist the reader to better understand the twin questions of why governments use subsidies and how subsidies impact international trade. As is frequently the case in economic analysis, the starting point for what follows is a “benchmark” economy featuring perfectly competitive markets. This approach provides the basis for general insights into the impact of policy interventions such as subsidies. As discussed f Read More

The World Trade Report 2004 is the second annual publication in the WTO Secretariat’s new series. As I indicated last year, the World Trade Report seeks to deepen public understanding of current trade policy issues and to contribute to more informed consideration of the options facing governments. Like last year, the Report begins with a review of recent world trade developments. This is followed by three shorter essays – on trade preferences, the te Read More