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Trade Agreements in a Post-COVID-19 World

July 28, 2020

Online

MULTIMEDIA

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Trade Agreements in a Post-COVID-19 World

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  • Virtual Launch of the Handbook and Database of Deep Trade Agreements

    COVID-19 has spawned new trade restrictions and threatens to widen old trade divisions. How far can trade agreements be a bulwark against protectionism?  Modern trade agreements cover not just trade but a range of policy areas, such as international flows of investment and labor, and the protection of intellectual property rights and the environment. The goal is integration beyond trade or deep integration. These agreements matter for economic development. Their rules influence how countries, and hence the people and firms that live and operate within them, transact, invest, work, and, ultimately, develop.

    This event will introduce the Handbook of Deep Trade Agreements and the underlying database⁠—the result of collaboration between the World Bank and experts from academia, the International Trade Centre (ITC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and World Trade Organization (WTO). The Handbook provides new data and analysis of the “deepening” of trade agreements. A panel of three leading experts will discuss the role trade agreements will play in a post COVID-19 world and how they may shape future patterns of trade and global value chains.

    [Presentation] Deep Trade Agreements in a Post-COVID-19 World: Insights from a New Database

  • Event Chair: Caroline Freund, Global Director, World Bank

    9:00 – 9:10 AM

    Introduction

    • Caroline Freund, Global Director, World Bank

    9:10 – 9:30 AM

    The role of deep agreements in a post-COVID-19 world

    • Aaditya Mattoo, World Bank
    • Nadia Rocha, World Bank
    • Michele Ruta, World Bank

    9:30 – 10:30 AM

    Round table followed by Q&A

    • Richard Baldwin, The Graduate Institute of Geneva
    • Emily Blanchard, Dartmouth College
    • Robert Staiger, Dartmouth College

  • Richard Baldwin

    Professor of International Economics, The Graduate Institute of Geneva

    Richard Baldwin is Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute, Geneva since 1991, and Editor-in-Chief of Vox since he founded it in June 2007. He was President/Director of CEPR (2014-2018), and a visiting professor at Oxford (2012-2015), and MIT (2003). In terms of government service, he was a Senior Staff Economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisors in the Bush Administration (1990-1991) on leave from Columbia University Business School where he was Associate Professor. He did his PhD in Economics at MIT with Paul Krugman with whom he has co-authored several articles. He advises governments and international organisation around the world, and is the author of numerous books and articles on international trade, globalisation, regionalism, and European integration. His 2016 book, The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalisation, was listed by Lawrence Summers as one of the five most important books on globalisation ever. His latest book, The Globotics Upheaval: Globalization, Robotics, and the Future of Work, was published in February 2019. He wrote his PhD at MIT under the guidance of Paul Krugman, with whom he has co-author a half dozen articles. His MSc in economics is from LSE, his BA in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he has honorary doctorates from the Turku School of Economics and Business in Finland (2005), the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland (2012), and the Pontifica Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), in Peru (2014). He is a member of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Stewardship Board on Trade and Investment Issues from 2016, having been a member of the WEF Global Agenda Council on Trade from 2009 to 2015. He was Vice Chair of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) in Washington (2008 - 2012), and an Elected Member on the Council of the European Economic Association, (1999-2004, 2006-2011).

    Emily Blanchard

    Associate Professor of Business Administration, Dartmouth College

    Emily Blanchard is an Associate Professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a Research Fellow with the Center for Economic Policy Research. In the 2019-20 academic year, she will be on sabbatical leave as a Visiting Fellow for the Kühne Center for Sustainable Globalization at the University of Zürich Department of Economics. Professor Blanchard's research lies at the intersection of international economics and public policy. She has written extensively on how foreign investment and global value chains are changing the role of trade agreements in the 21st century, and how globalization and education shape political and economic outcomes within and across countries. Her research is published in leading journals, including the Review of Economic Studies, Journal of International Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, and World Trade Review. She serves on multiple editorial boards, and has worked in collaboration with the World Trade Organization, World Bank, UNIDO, Institute for Research on Public Policy, and others. Prior to joining the Tuck faculty, she was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Virginia. She graduated with honors in Economics from Wellesley College and earned MSc. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

    Caroline Freund

    Global Director for Trade, Investment, and Competitiveness, World Bank Group

    Caroline Freund is Global Director of Trade, Investment and Competitiveness. Previously she was a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. She has also worked as Chief Economist for the Middle East and North Africa at the World Bank, after working for nearly a decade in the international trade unit of the research department. Freund began her career in the international finance division of the Federal Reserve Board and spent a year visiting the research department of the IMF. She has published extensively in academic journals and is the author of Rich People Poor Countries: The Rise of Emerging Market Tycoons and their Mega Firms. She is a US national and received a PhD in economics from Columbia University.

    Aaditya Mattoo

    Chief Economist, East Asia and Pacific, World Bank Group

    Aaditya Mattoo is Chief Economist of the East Asia and Pacific Region of the World Bank. He specializes in development, trade and international cooperation, and provides policy advice to governments. He is also Co-Director of the World Development Report 2020 on Global Value Chains. Prior to this he was the Research Manager, Trade and Integration, at the World Bank. Before he joined the Bank, Mr. Mattoo was Economic Counsellor at the World Trade Organization and taught economics at the University of Sussex and Churchill College, Cambridge University. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge, and an M.Phil in Economics from the University of Oxford. He has published on development, trade, trade in services, and international trade agreements in academic and other journals and his work has been cited in the Economist, Financial Times, New York Times, and Time Magazine.

    Nadia Rocha

    Senior Economist, World Bank Group

    Nadia Rocha is a Senior Economist in the Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment Global Practice at the World Bank. Prior to Joining the Bank in 2016 Nadia worked for five years in the Economic Research and Statistics division of the World Trade Organization. She was seconded to serve as a Senior Advisor on trade to the Colombian Ministry of Trade during 2015. Nadia holds a Ph.D in International Economics from the Graduate Institute of Geneva, a MA in Economics from Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona and a BA in economics from Bocconi University in Milan. Her current work focuses on regionalism, trade costs, global value chains and trade and gender.

    Michele Ruta

    Lead Economist, World Bank Group

    Michele Ruta is Lead Economist in the Macroeconomics, Trade & Investment Global Practice of the World Bank Group, where he leads the work program on regional integration. He had previous appointments as Economic Advisor to the Senior Director of the Trade & Competitiveness Global Practice (2015-2018), Senior Economist at the IMF (2013-2015), Counsellor at the WTO (2007-2013) and Marie Curie Fellow at the European University Institute (2004-2007). He holds a PhD in economics from Columbia University (2004) and an undergraduate degree from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (1998). Michele’s research interests are in international economics, and particularly on issues concerning international/regional integration. He has published in refereed journals such as the Journal of International Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Journal of the European Economic Association. He was a lead author of the World Trade Report of the WTO between 2008 and 2013, and contributed to many policy reports, including the Global Economic Prospects of the World Bank, and the World Economic Outlook of the IMF. His work has been cited, among others, in the Economist, Financial Times, Guardian, Le Monde.

    Robert Staiger

    Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College

    Robert W. Staiger is the Roth Family Distinguished Professor in the Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Economics, at Dartmouth College. Professor Staiger received his A.B. from Williams College in 1980 and his Ph.D. from The University of Michigan in 1985. He was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Stanford University from 1985 through 1991 and was promoted at Stanford to tenured Associate Professor in 1991. In 1993 Staiger joined The University of Wisconsin Economics Department, where he remained until his return to Stanford in 2006 to become the Holbrook Working Professor in Commodity Price Studies in the Department of Economics. In 2011 he rejoined the Economics Department at Wisconsin as the Stockwell Professor of Economics, and during academic year 2013-2014 he visited Dartmouth as the Roth Family Distinguished Visiting Scholar, joining the Economics Department at Dartmouth in the Fall of 2014. Professor Staiger’s research focus is on international trade policy, rules and institutions, with a particular emphasis on the economics of the GATT/WTO. Professor Staiger’s research has been published in a variety of academic journals, and in a book, The Economics of the World Trading System, co-authored with Kyle Bagwell and published by The MIT Press (2002). He also served as Editor, with Kyle Bagwell, of The Handbook of Commercial Policy, published by Elsevier in December 2016.

  • For more information, visit our Deep Trade Agreement online portal, which offers new data and analysis on the evolution of the content of preferential trade agreements. Explore data visualizations and dashboards, download the datasets, and stay informed about the latest research.

    Download the handbook (PDF)

    Download data

Details

  • Date: July 28, 2020
  • Time: 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM EDT

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