IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iie/wpaper/wp23-15.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Modern industrial policy and the WTO

Author

Listed:
  • Chad P. Bown

    (Peterson Institute for International Economics)

Abstract

This paper surveys the economics of industrial policy as it relates to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Motivated by concern that the modern use of industrial policy is emerging in ways that threaten cooperation in the international trading system, the paper begins with the basic historical economic framework for tying industrial policy to underlying market failures. It then introduces the dominant economic understanding of the role played by the WTO, it examines the WTO's rules on subsidies (and thus industrial policy), the unease with the evolution of the trading system's subsidy rules, gaps in knowledge, and important data and measurement shortcomings. The main part of the paper examines four areas motivating why modern industrial policy is different and why it has become so important for the trading system: China, supply chain resilience, supply chain responsiveness, and climate change. The paper identifies the evidence to date, open questions, and potential paths forward for economic research to help inform policymaker efforts to restore international economic cooperation in trade and industrial policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Chad P. Bown, 2023. "Modern industrial policy and the WTO," Working Paper Series WP23-15, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp23-15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.piie.com/publications/working-papers/2023/modern-industrial-policy-and-wto
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    WTO; industrial policy; subsidies; China; supply chains; resilience; climate change;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • L52 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Industrial Policy; Sectoral Planning Methods

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp23-15. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peterson Institute webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iieeeus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.