Economic research and trade policy analysis
Agradecimientos y Descargo de responsabilidad
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 Informe son Barbara d’Andrea, Andreas Maurer, Roberta Piermartini y Robert Teh (División de Estudios Económicos y Estadística), y Antonia Carzaniga. Otros autores son Marc Auboin, Eddy Bekkers, John Hancock, Kathryn Lundquist, José-Antonio Monteiro, Coleman Nee, Victor Stolzenburg, Ankai Xu y Qing Ye (División de Estudios Económicos y Estadística); Pamela Apaza, Markus Jelitto, Joscelyn Magdeleine, Juan Marchetti, Martin Roy y Lee Tuthill (División de Comercio de Servicios e Inversión); y Rainer Lanz (División de Desarrollo).
Commerce des marchandises et des services en valeur (nominale) en 2009
La valeur en dollars du commerce mondial des marchandises a diminué de 23 pour cent en 2009, pour s’établir à 12 100 milliards de dollars EU, contre 16 100 milliards en 2008 (voir le tableau 1 de l’Appendice). Cette baisse a été due en partie à la diminution du volume des échanges, le reste s’expliquant principalement par la baisse des prix des produits de base, en particulier le pétrole, en 2009. Après avoir atteint des niveaux record en 2008, les prix mondiaux du pétrole brut ont baissé de 37 pour cent en 2009, passant de 95 dollars EU à 60 dollars EU le baril en moyenne. De ce fait, l’évolution du commerce en valeur nominale dans certains pays et régions peut être très différente de son évolution en volume, en particulier dans le cas des exportateurs de pétrole et des importateurs de pétrole.
Why services trade matters
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 number of areas, such as skills, gender and location of economic activity. Section C.4 concludes.
Dictionary of Trade Policy Terms
This is an accessible guide to the vocabulary used in trade negotiations. It explains about 2,500 terms and concepts in simple language. Its main emphasis is on the multilateral trading system represented by the agreements under the World Trade Organization (WTO). In addition it covers many of the trade-related activities, outcomes and terms used in other international organizations, such as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development(UNCTAD), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the OECD. The last five years have seen a rapid spread in the formation of freetrade areas in all parts of the world. This dictionary allocates generous space to the vocabulary associated with such agreements. It offers clear explanations, for example, of the concepts used in the administration of preferential rules of origin. Additional areas covered include emerging trade issues and issues based particularly on developing-country concerns.
Prefacio del director general
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 prueba severamente la imaginación política de los gobiernos en todo el planeta y, en un mundo interdependiente como el de hoy, su voluntad de hacer causa común en la tarea de afrontar desafíos que son de todos. Hoy como nunca son imprescindibles la cooperación internacional efectiva y los mercados abiertos.
Services market opening: Salience, results and meaning
This chapter is structured around three questions. What advances have been made on services market opening? what have been the specific market access commitments of least-developed countries (LDCs)? And what is the progress made with domestic regulation disciplines? This chapter examines the extent to which the services-specific commitments and domestic regulatory disciplines of Article XII members differ from those undertaken by original WTO members at similar levels of development. Although no single indicator exists that can be used to make this comparison, given the textual nature of specific commitments, as opposed to the numerical properties of tariffs, several other possible parameters exist, which could be used alone or in combination to assess such departures. The evidence and patterns in Article XII members’ services market access commitments and regulatory state-of-play and advances are examined. The trends and patterns in the depth and sectoral coverage of commitments are identified. The results from accession negotiations on the rules are reviewed with particular focus on how they compare to the envisaged disciplines on domestic regulation under the General Agreement on Trade in Services Article VI:4. Finally, the performance of Article XII LDC members in their WTO accession services negotiations is reviewed. Overall, the evidence indicates that Article XII members’ services bindings go further than those of original WTO members.
Conclusión
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 tercero de confianza, promete avances interesantes. Esta tecnología podría permitir a los particulares y a las empresas de todo el mundo efectuar transacciones de manera más eficiente, más barata y más rápida, preservando al mismo tiempo un elevado nivel de seguridad. Al simplificar y digitalizar procesos en los que participan múltiples partes interesadas y que hasta ahora dependían en gran medida del papel, reduciendo así los costes de procesamiento, verificación, seguimiento, coordinación y transporte, podría tener repercusiones importantes en la forma en que se realizan las operaciones comerciales, ya se trate de transacciones comerciales transfronterizas financieras o físicas. Podría reducir el fraude, mejorar la gestión de los derechos de propiedad intelectual, mejorar la rastreabilidad y la confianza en las cadenas de valor y brindar nuevas oportunidades a las pequeñas empresas.
Globalization and economic volatility
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 individual business or household faces is dominated by idiosyncratic risk. That is, of the plethora of economic shocks impacting the outcomes for households and businesses, the evidence shows that the variance of idiosyncratic shocks is at least an order of magnitude larger than the variance of aggregate shocks. For example, whether a business is profitable reflects primarily idiosyncratic factors such as product quality, product mix and choice of technology, broadly defined, including the choice of business organization, factor mix, location and business-specific productivity, and cost and demand factors. Similarly, for households, earnings and employment outcomes primarily reflect the education and skills of household members as well as whether household members are well matched in the labour market.
Conclusion
The health and economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted both the vulnerabilities and the strengths of the interconnected global economy, which has at its core the multilateral trading system. This report has examined the resilience of the global economy to crises, how trade plays a pivotal role in developing resilience, and in what ways the global trade system can be improved to allow countries to prepare for, cope with and recover from crises.
Responses to Trade Opening: Evidence and Lessons from Asia
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 have stemmed from a country’s own disappointment with its growth performance during its import substitution phase. While movement toward free trade is expected to expand the size of the overall economic pie, such changes always produce both losers and winners. In fact, it is this creation of winners and losers, along with “individualspecific uncertainty” (Fernandez and Rodrik 1991) about who benefits and who loses from reforms, that has led to the delays in trade reforms, appropriately called “status quo bias.”
Introduction
Trade and production networks are not new. Firms have been producing items with components sourced from around the globe for centuries. Businesses have continuously sought out new markets for their products. What have changed, however, are the speed, scale, depth and breadth of global interactions. Increasingly, new players have become active in what have come to be called global value chains or global supply chains. This process of organization has brought entirely new issues to the table for consideration.
Foreword by the Director-General
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is the world’s first general multilateral trade agreement. It was signed in 1947 and came into force on 1 January 1948. As the contracting parties began to implement what is more widely known as the GATT 1947, it is unlikely they would have foreseen the full magnitude of the political and economic importance of their accord and its enduring impact as a fundamental framework for multilateral trade right up to the present day.
Les engagements en matière de politique commerciale et les mesures contingentes
Les accords commerciaux définissent les règles régissant la conduite de la politique commerciale. Ces règles doivent établir un équilibre entre les engagements et la flexibilité. Un excès de flexibilité peut affaiblir la valeur des engagements, mais un manque de flexibilité peut rendre les règles politiquement inapplicables. Cette tension entre des engagements crédibles et une flexibilité n’est jamais loin de la surface dans les négociations commerciales. Par exemple, la question d’un “mécanisme de sauvegarde spéciale” (c’est à dire la question de savoir dans quelle mesure les pays en développement pourraient protéger leurs agriculteurs en cas de poussée des importations) a été cruciale dans les discussions qui ont eu lieu lors de la miniréunion ministérielle de juillet 2008, qui visait à l’adoption des modalités de négociation - ou d’un schéma final - pour l’agriculture et pour l’accès aux marchés pour les produits non agricoles (AMNA).
Comercio de servicios de transporte aéreo: Evolución reciente y asuntos de política
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 ha destacado la importancia de una infraestructura de transporte aéreo eficiente, efectiva y fiable, especialmente en los países en desarrollo, para lograr que se materialicen los beneficios derivados del comercio (OMC, 2004). En esos estudios se destaca también la importante contribución de la aviación civil internacional al proceso de desarrollo y su influencia en las decisiones, tanto de carácter comercial como de ocupación del tiempo libre, de muchas personas. Se espera que esa importancia aumente como consecuencia de las innovaciones tecnológicas, la desreglamentación y el mayor acceso a los mercados para las empresas extranjeras, factores todos ellos que están haciendo que el transporte aéreo sea más accesible a un conjunto mayor de clientes y a una gama más amplia de países.
Comment les contraintes et les possibilités façonnent les rôles des femmes dans le commerce
Les femmes ont tout à gagner du développement du commerce, mais elles sont confrontées à des obstacles qui empêchent ou entravent leur accès aux nouvelles possibilités. Ces contraintes contribuent à expliquer pourquoi les femmes travaillent dans certains secteurs, détiennent et dirigent certains types d’entreprises, consomment certains types de marchandises ou prennent certaines décisions dans leurs foyers – comme expliqué en détail dans le chapitre 1. Le rôle croissant des services dans l’économie et le commerce mondiaux (ci-après servicification), l’essor des chaînes de valeur mondiales (CVM) et l’adoption de nouvelles technologies créent pour les femmes des possibilités nouvelles et prometteuses de faire davantage de commerce et d’en tirer un meilleur parti. Un examen de ces tendances sous l’angle de l’égalité hommesfemmes permet de montrer comment les femmes peuvent s’emparer d’une part plus importante des avantages du commerce.