The Global Value Chain Revolution and Trade Policy

Richard Baldwin, professor of international economics at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, discussed the the global value chain revolution and trade policy at PIIE on June 14, 2016. Anabel Gonzalez, senior director of the World Bank Group Global Practice on Trade and Competitiveness, and J. Bradford Jensen, senior fellow at PIIE, shared their commentary on Baldwin’s analysis.

Baldwin has been at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, since 1991. He has also been director of the Centre for Economic Policy Research since 2014, editor-in-chief of Vox since he founded it in June 2007, and is an elected member of the Council of the European Economic Association. He was a senior staff economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisors in the Bush administration (1990–91) following negotiations for the Uruguay Round, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Enterprise of the Americas Initiative (EAI), as well as numerous US-Japan trade issues. He was program director of CEPR’s International Trade program from 1991 to 2001. He is coauthor of The Shape of a Swiss-US Free Trade Agreement.

Anabel Gonzalez has been senior director of the World Bank Group Global Practice on Trade and Competitiveness since July 2014. Previously, she served as Costa Rica’s minister of foreign trade and the president's principal advisor, negotiator, and spokesperson on trade and investment policy. During her more than 15 years of service with the Ministry of Foreign Trade, she has held various positions including director general for international trade negotiations and vice-minister of foreign trade. She also served as the director to the agriculture and commodities division of the World Trade Organization, where she contributed to the Doha Round, providing advice and support to senior management and member countries.

J. Bradford Jensen, PIIE senior fellow, is also professor of economics and international business at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He is a senior policy scholar at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has been affiliated with the Institute since 2003, serving as deputy director from 2003 to August 2007. Before joining the Institute, he served as director of the Center for Economic Studies at the US Census Bureau. He is author of Global Trade in Services: Fear, Facts, and Offshoring, as well as of many widely cited academic articles.