In the era of continuous and steadily accelerating technological change that started with the Industrial Revolution, economies and societies were repeatedly transformed in ways that can be traced to ownership of the essential and scarce factor of production of the day and command of the economic...

The progressive shift of economic activity into the digital realm, including through digital and digitally-enabled trade, poses not only a wide range of conceptual issues which require discussion to support a shared understanding of risks and benefits, but promises to create perhaps...

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...

This note considers the nature of the cybersecurity concerns that have been raised in the decoupling debate and their implications for national security, contrasts those with the nature of the national security concerns that have traditionally been included in the rules-based trade framework,...

This brief examines the framing of the proposed reforms to the Investment Canada Act in the context of the digital transformation and the evolving nature of the contemporary innovation-intensive economy. It argues that the Act must go beyond considerations of the size of firms in triggering...

The knowledge-based and data-driven economy represents a new stage in the evolution of the economy, with transformative impacts on how goods and services are developed, produced, traded across borders, distributed, and consumed. Data is the essential capital of this new economic age as it...

The pandemic is impacting at a time of major transformational change in the global economy driven by the digital transformation, a decoupling between the United States and China, and the rise of populism. The massive economic shock of the pandemic is not only accelerating changes that were “in...

The WTO as we know it – version 1.0 – was created for an industrial economy with an overlay of a knowledge-based economy that is now being transformed into a data-driven economy. The content of WTO rules for this new digital economy promises to be very different what is in place now. Not...