This policy brief tries to work out some of the implications for the Global South of the emergence of Industry 4.0 and the evolution toward a data-driven economy. The digital transformation provides developing economies new opportunities to leapfrog industrial age infrastructure, to draw on the...

On March 2-3, 2006, a group of leading observers of the international trade and investment scene gathered in Ottawa for an informal discussion of the prospects for the Doha Development Agenda in view of the progress in negotiations made at the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade...

Participation in the modern, globalized economy necessarily entails some degree of economy-level specialization in terms of the relative intensities of activities, since all economies – and especially developing ones – are small relative to the global economy. At the same time, it has been...

While the digital transformation opens up new opportunities for convergence of the global south in terms of technological leapfrogging, knowledge spillovers and access to new market platforms, it also throws up some daunting competitive and governance challenges. These include: keeping pace with...

This paper provides a thematic summary of a seminar hosted by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Ottawa, Canada, on 17 February 2005. The seminar addressed five themes: (a) the scope and intended benefits of North–South Regional Trade Agreements involving Asia, Africa, and...

The proliferation of preferential trade agreements in recent years has reenergized a long-standing debate over their benefits and costs. This paper argues that a balanced view is in order. The trade creating effects of free trade agreements (FTAs) are likely to fall off sharply with increasing...

The general understanding of international trade has been transformed over the past decade or so with the now massive body of literature developed in the context of so-called "new new trade theory" which takes into account the heterogeneity of firms and the importance of fixed costs of trade....

Since the stalling of the Doha Round – which was designed to be development friendly – the world is awash in mega regionals. Major negotiations currently underway include the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Trade in Services...

On March 13-14, 2003, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade convened an informal meeting of leading observers of international trade and investment to discuss prospects for the Doha Development Agenda. This paper represents a thematic summary of those discussions, which were...