Economic research and trade policy analysis

Building economic resilience requires an understanding of economic challenges and opportunities, as well as the ability to anticipate, evaluate and manage risks. Although trade can spread and magnify shocks, it can help countries prepare for, cope with and recover from shocks. Initial conditions, the nature of the shock and policy choices, including the level of diversification, are important in determining what role trade will play.

Charles Dickens’ phrase “it was the best of times; it was the worst of times” is for many Indonesian workers an apt summary of their experience during the early 2000s. While the national economy and especially its resource-exporting sectors enjoyed trade-driven growth of unprecedented magnitude and duration, millions of blue-collar workers and labor market entrants found themselves paradoxically sidelined from well-paid jobs in manufacturing, and instead forced to seek livelihoods in low-paid, low-skill service sector jobs. This happened at a time when many Asian countries, led by the People’s Republic of China, were enjoying (continued) expansion of manufacturing trade by participating in global production networks, which in turn created better employment opportunities for their less-skilled agricultural workforces. For many Indonesians, on the other hand, the boom was a period of stagnating real wages and diminished earnings prospects, even as national income and spending surged ahead and overall expectations for the future became increasingly bright. For workers, the consequence of job displacement due to structural change would have been particularly severe during this time.

Cette section examine les effets de la technologie sur le niveau et la composition de l’emploi et des salaires. En augmentant la productivité des facteurs de production, le progrès technologique repousse la frontière des possibilités de production d’une économie, de sorte que la même quantité de produits peut être obtenue avec moins de ressources, ou une plus grande quantité avec les mêmes ressources.

The emergence of democracy in Indonesia as a result of the economic crisis in the late 1990s has brought significant changes to the policy-making process in the country. The reform advocates who emerged following the downfall of the authoritarian Suharto regime saw liberalization and engagement with the global economy as key to advancing economic reform in Indonesia. While recognizing the importance of concluding the global trade negotiations under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Indonesia also remains committed to pursuing liberalization at the regional level through its membership of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Recently, Indonesia has also engaged in bilateral preferential trade agreements (PTAs), in part due to the stalling of the Doha Round negotiations, but also because the pursuit of PTAs by Indonesia’s immediate neighbours has generated fear among government and economic actors about the possible loss of competitiveness in key export markets.

WTO accession still holds a magnetic attraction for non-members. Why is this so, in spite of the challenges faced by the organisation, conclusions by analysts of deadlock in the Doha Development Agenda, assessments that trade policy action has shifted elsewhere to preferential trade arrangements (bilateral and regional trade agreements, including more recently, ‘mega-regionals’) and repeated forecasts about the WTO’s ‘irrelevance’ and ‘unravelling’? Systemically, what have WTO accessions contributed to the rules-based trading system through their processes, procedures, best practices and results? What effects have accession negotiations had on domestic reforms in Article XII members? Are there broader lessons for the WTO? This chapter demonstrates that, after the coming into force of the WTO in 1995, results from WTO accession negotiations served to update trade rules continuously (including influencing WTO jurisprudence), enlarged market access opportunities, provided acceding governments with a critical multilateral instrument for legislation-based domestic reforms, and supported geopolitical and geo-economic transformations from centrally planned to market-based economies, the rule of law and good governance. The changes associated with these results were evident from the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. The evidence strongly suggests that the accession process and its results have established a legal framework for international cooperation, contributed to the global economic transformation of command to market economies and provided a platform for Article XII members to implement their development and modernisation priorities. Overall, the legal, economic and trade policy impact from the deposited Accession Protocols and the process of accession negotiations per se have not only reinforced existing rules and raised the systemic bar, with associated catalytic effect for domestic reforms, but have also staked out the parameters for the future of the rules-based trading system, including a future WTO work programme.

Ukraine embarked on its road to WTO accession in 1992, a year after it had declared its independence. Fourteen years of intense work, steep learning, persistence, political will and flexibility were to follow. Ukraine faced many immediate challenges and tasks in strengthening its independence and creating and establishing the national institutions required by an independent state, moving away from a centralised economy and reinforcing foreign policy. Ukraine had to totally eliminate its post-Soviet legacy. A new system of national government and administration had to be established. Democracy, the rule of law and a free market became the guiding principles for political, social and economic life. WTO accession implied increased competition, which turned out to be quite painful for some companies. However, the negative scenarios foreseen by some researchers did not occur; in fact, the accession offered the national economy new incentives for structural and long-lasting change. However, WTO membership is not simply a recipe for future happiness. While it stimulates trade and business environments, members must still work within the multilateral system to keep up to date.

En esta sección se presenta un panorama de la utilización de las subvenciones tanto a nivel mundial como a distintos niveles de desglose geográfico y sectorial. Teniendo en cuenta la cantidad y la calidad de los datos disponibles, no es posible presentar un cuadro exhaustivo y sistemático de la incidencia de las subvenciones.

In the interest of accuracy, this publication uses the historical names of GATT contracting parties as they were used at the time of each dispute, e.g. Ceylon, Czechoslovakia, Hong Kong, the Federal Republic of Germany, Yugoslavia or the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Likewise, this publication makes reference to EEC-6, EEC-9, EEC-10 or EEC-12 to reflect different stages of enlargement of the European Economic Communities. It also refers to individual EEC member States (e.g. France, Italy, etc.) for cases when these countries acted in their own capacity.

This chapter explains how accession negotiations have helped to further the agricultural reform process by upgrading and deepening the existing multilateral rules on trade in agriculture. It provides a broad overview of the existing multilateral disciplines in the area of agriculture, as contained in the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA). Using the experience of the thirty-six concluded accessions, the chapter suggests that a number of commitments, such as extensive market access commitments, ambitious domestic support commitments and comprehensive bindings with regard to export duties, helped establish high benchmarks vis-à-vis the undertakings of the original members of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In market access, the commitments of acceded members are primarily in the form of reductions in tariff bindings, with a very limited use of tariff rate quotas. In domestic support, the commitments of the acceded members have been negotiated based on the respective recourse to such support during a recent three-year period, dependent on the timing of the individual accessions. These commitments are generally more ambitious than the corresponding commitments of the original members under the AoA, which were derived based on the domestic support policy framework existing in 1986–8. Similarly, in the field of export subsidies, the acceded governments’ ambitious efforts to eliminate these highly distorting subsidies helped to create a strong momentum in the broader agriculture negotiations, leading to the eventual agreement on the global elimination of agricultural export subsidies at the Nairobi Ministerial Conference in 2015.

À l’ère numérique, un nombre croissant de gouvernements a adopté des politiques visant à stimuler la croissance grâce à l’innovation et à la modernisation technologique. Les conséquences économiques intérieures liées à la COVID-19 conduisent les pays à renforcer ces politiques. Le présent rapport examine ces tendances ainsi que le rôle que peuvent jouer le commerce et l’OMC. Il montre que la coopération internationale pourrait jouer un rôle important pour aider les pays à atteindre ces objectifs plus efficacement, tout en limitant autant que possible les retombées négatives des politiques nationales.