Trade Imbalances and Multilateral Trade Cooperation

Rising current account and merchandise trade imbalances marked the years before the global financial and economic crisis. These imbalances either contributed to or precipitated the crisis and to the extent that they create systemic risks, it is desirable that they be reduced. There are many factors related to macroeconomic, structural, exchange rate and financial policies that contributed to the imbalances.

> Guía para descargar ficheros

The inability to manage these issues at the international level reflects the “coherence gap” in global governance. This paper examines the contribution that the WTO can make in its three areas of activities — negotiations, rule-making and dispute settlement — to deal with trade imbalances and with the main factors leading to them, including exchange rate misalignments. First, market opening efforts in services, including in the area of financial services, can reduce policy-related distortions and market imperfections in surplus countries that lead to the build-up of unsustainable imbalances. Second, in the context of a broad international effort to coordinate macroeconomic, exchange rate and structural policies to deal with the roots of imbalances (the first-best solution), there is a general efficiency argument that could be made for the use of WTO-triggered trade actions to enforce cooperative behaviour towards rebalancing. Absent this first-best response, trade rules alone would not provide an efficient instrument to compensate for the weaknesses in international co-operation in macroeconomic, exchange rate and structural policies.

N°: ERSD-2012-23

Autores:

Juan Marchetti, WTO
Michele Ruta, WTO
Robert Teh, WTO

Fecha de redacción: noviembre de 2012

Palabras clave:

Trade imbalance, current account, exchange rates, international policy
coordination, WTO, international sanctions

Código JEL:

F13, F31, F32, F42, F51

volver al principio

Declinación de responsabilidad

Este es un documento de trabajo y se refiere, por consiguiente, a un estudio en curso. Refleja las opiniones personales de funcionarios o especialistas invitados y es el resultado de trabajos de investigación profesionales. No pretende reflejar la posición o las opiniones de la OMC o de sus Miembros ni la posición oficial de ningún funcionario. Los errores que puedan existir son responsabilidad de los autores. Pueden obtenerse ejemplares de este documento de trabajo en la Secretaría de la División, en la dirección siguiente: División de Desarrollo y Estudios Económicos, Organización Mundial del Comercio, rue de Lausanne 154, CH-1211 Ginebra 21, Suiza. Sírvanse indicar en su solicitud el título y el número del documento.

Descargar el documento en formato pdf (42 páginas, 393KB; solamente en inglés, se abrirá una nueva ventana)