FUTURE TRADE RESEARCH AREAS THAT MATTER TO DEVELOPING COUNTRY POLICYMAKERS

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Information on trade policymaking in other countries - trading partners,
including processes, key players and stakeholders and their interaction, and
institutional settings;

Empirical evidence together with analyses of economic and social impacts of
various scenarios of multilateral trade negotiations under the Doha Development
Agenda;

Empirical evidence together with analyses of the economic and social impacts
of bilateral and regional trade agreements;

Systematic information on constraints and opportunities for forming regional
horizontal and vertical linkages in the production and supply of manufactures,
particularly in relation to the high economic growth rates of China and India;

Estimates of the impacts of trade liberalization on the poor, and in particular
the impacts of distributional changes on the various categories of poverty;

Evidence of the impact of regulatory systems and behind-the-border measures
on economic efficiency.

To provide such inputs into policymaking, research should focus on: (a) regional
and multilateral trade liberalization; (b) liberalization of services trade and impact of services
on economic reform; (c) non-tariff barriers and behind-the-border barriers; (d) the movement
of people; (e) democratization of trade policy design; and (f) advances in methodology.

(a) Regional and multilateral trade liberalization, including:

• More analytical work, including number crunching, to tackle the impacts
of different types of preferential agreements (e.g., WTO+, WTO-) and
allow for a sound comparative analysis and derivation of policy
recommendations;

• Analytically-friendly databases that would allow some econometric and
quantitative analysis;

• Consideration of the political-economy approach in studying the dynamics
of the negotiating process;

• The study of sectoral agreements at the regional/bilateral level (e.g.,
services, investment and labour mobility), and the possibility of pooling
them into wider and more comprehensive schemes/frameworks;

• Assessment of the extent to which WTO is a viable instrument for
further trade liberalization.

(b) Liberalization of services trade and impact of services on economic reform,
including:

• Assessment of the extent to which GATS can induce further liberalization
in services;

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