Economic research and trade policy analysis

La OMC tiene un papel importante que desempeñar en la gobernanza de la IA.

L’incidence généralisée et l’effet transformateur que l’intelligence artificielle (IA) a actuellement sur la société se font sentir dans tous les domaines, allant du travail, de la production et du commerce à la santé, aux arts et aux activités de loisirs.

The past quarter of a century has witnessed an unprecedented level of income convergence, accompanied by the integration of many developing economies into global markets. Despite this, some economies have been left behind. This chapter discusses how the participation of developing economies in global trade and investment flows can accelerate structural transformation and enhance productivity growth, thereby helping lowand middle-income economies to achieve the economic growth that ensures convergence with high-income economies. The chapter also examines why some economies have taken little advantage of globalization, and focuses on barriers to maximizing the gains from trade participation, such as trade costs and commodity dependence. Finally, the chapter discusses how recent trends in the global economy are shaping future opportunities and challenges for developing economies to leverage trade and foreign direct investment for economic growth, and which policies can help to achieve convergence in the upcoming decade.

This chapter discusses how the multilateral trading system has helped some economies to take advantage of trade to further their development, but has not succeeded in helping others to harness trade for growth and considers what could be done to ensure that the WTO leaves no economy behind. It also examines the effect of the WTO on how the benefits of trade are shared out within economies, and discusses how the WTO and trade can be made more inclusive for people and firms. Finally, the chapter outlines the areas in which work at the WTO could be coordinated with work at other international organizations to help make trade more inclusive, such as by enhancing infrastructure and digital connectivity to bridge the digital gap or by ensuring coherence between trade and environmental policies.

Trade has raised aggregate welfare and reduced poverty without necessarily raising inequality in many economies, but the impact of trade is more complex for individuals. People may benefit from cheaper prices, larger variety and export opportunities, but they may also face increased competition and may, therefore, either gain or lose from trade. This chapter reviews why, although most people gain from trade, some suffer losses. These losses can be aggravated by distortions and barriers, such as mobility costs or monopolies, that tend to impact more vulnerable groups disproportionately, and may prevent them from adjusting to import competition and accessing export opportunities. The chapter also examines why using restrictive trade policy to redistribute gains from trade is often unsuccessful and can have unintended consequences, such as retaliation by trade partners. In contrast, domestic policies, such as education and social protection, are more effective in addressing inequality. Their importance is likely to grow as the digital revolution, climate change and geopolitics continue to shape the distributional impacts of trade.

Global trade is often accused of creating a more unequal world, but in fact the opposite is happening. Billions of people in developing economies are catching up to the more advanced economies, as millions of people in the advanced economies continue to move ahead. This global economic convergence is only possible because the world has become more open and integrated – expanding access to new markets, new technologies and new models for achieving rapid, sustained and inclusive growth.

Trade policies are a necessary part of any relationship between trade and AI that results in inclusive economic growth.

We also thank the following individuals from outside the WTO Secretariat for their useful comments during the initial drafting stage of the report: Ashutosh Chadha (Microsoft), Marcio Cruz (International Finance Corporation), Edelbert Häfele and Judit Inacsovszky (PATEV Associates GmbH), James Howe (International Trade Centre), Carsten Fink (World Intellectual Property Organization), Greg LaRocca and Mary Thornton (Semiconductor Industry Association), Kristina McElheran, Ruiqi Sun and Daniel Trefler (University of Toronto), Ana Carolina da Motta (Amazon Web Services), Hildegunn Kyvik Nordås (Council on Economic Policies and Örebro University), Ana Maria Santacreu (Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis), Ina Simonovska (University of California, Davis), Toh Si Tong (Infocomm Media Development Authority, Singapore) and Yoto V. Yotov (Drexel University).

As trade shapes the development and deployment of AI, and AI could, in turn, reshape global trade, stronger international trade cooperation, both at the WTO and with other international organizations, is important to ensure that AI is beneficial and that the benefits of AI are more widely shared.

Women entrepreneurs were hit disproportionately hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, as their firms are generally younger, smaller and concentrated in industry sectors affected the most by economic shutdowns. However, very little research has addressed the ways in which women-led firms navigated these challenges. In this study, we investigate the ways in which women entrepreneurs adapted to the business repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we focus on the implementation of digital tools as a viable instrument for building adaptive capacity.

On average, female workers receive a lower wage than male workers. In this chapter, we analyse the potential contribution of trade policy reform to a reduction in this gender wage gap. We first establish four stylized facts: (i) tariffs are on average higher in more female labour-intensive sectors; (ii) trade costs are on average larger in female labour-intensive services than in goods; (iii) services trade restrictiveness is higher in more female labour-intensive services; (iv) trade costs associated with the need for face-to-face interaction are larger in female labour-intensive sectors.

This chapter shows that, despite difficulties in the global trade policy landscape, global trade flows have been resilient and continue to evolve in a direction that is more sustainable and inclusive. Narratives surrounding the benefits of globalization have turned more sceptical in the past decade. These narratives have started to reflect in global trade as the first policy-driven fractures appear in the system. Yet, the digital revolution continues to promote economic integration by facilitating trade in goods and, even more so, in services. There is still significant potential for trade to contribute further to the growth of the world economy, and to bring further benefits to developing economies via the expansion of global value chains. However, if the untapped potential of new trade flows is to be accessed, policies must remain outward-looking.