Trade is a well-established driver of growth and poverty reduction, but changes in trade policy also have distributional impacts that create winners and losers. It is vital to understand and clearly communicate how trade affects economic well-being across all segments of the population, as well as how policies can more effectively ensure that the gains from trade are distributed more widely.
This report provides a deeper understanding of the distributional effects of trade across regions, industries and demographic groups within countries over time. In extending the latest economic thinking to developing countries through a series of newly developed models and databases as well as five country case studies, the report aims to help policymakers better identify who will benefit and who may need support as the structure of the economy changes through trade.
The report includes a review of innovations in empirical and theoretical work covering the impacts of trade at the sub-national level, highlights from empirical case studies on Bangladesh, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Sri Lanka, and a policy agenda to improve distributional outcomes from trade.