WTO CHAIRS - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Professor of Economics
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Partner at Ideas Centre
The WTO Chairs programme is invaluable. Through the Chairs' Outreach pillar, the chair holders familiarize stakeholders in developing countries with the WTO, bringing clarity to its role. Chairs complement this with a teaching curriculum that trains students in the intricacies and benefits of the multilateral trading system, with the WTO as its guardian, thus preparing the next generation of trade-policy makers. The Chairs buttress this with acute research on the system and the WTO, including by periodic contributions to WTO volumes on trade and related matters. These activities are supported by a highly professional unit at the WTO Secretariat. This package is considerably beyond technical assistance-it encourages and enables developing country Members to be their own best source of trade policy advice.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Professor
- Professor of International Business
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Professor of International Law and European Law
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Dongfang Scholar Chair Professor
The WTO Chairs Program is unique among chair professor programs in academia as the only one focusing on policy-making. It is also the only one among the WTO's many technical assistance programs designed to boost the capacity of developing countries by training the next generation of policy-makers. In the decade since its inception, the WTO Chairs Program has played a big role in bridging academic research and policymaking. The research outputs of the Chairs are mostly practice-oriented and provided invaluable intellectual support to the countries and regions where they are based. The Chairs in many countries have become the "go-to" think-tanks on trade issues. Overall, the Chairs Program has become an indispensable part of the WTO technical assistance program that shall be further strengthened.
Job Titles:
- Lecturer and Facilitator "Global Scenarios"
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Director of the Centre D'Economie De La Sorbonne, Professor of Economics
The WTO Chair at the University of Tunis helped build a network of trade researchers and experts all over the Middle East and North Africa. This vibrant ecosystem, which led to the publication in academic journals of 20 papers, proved his resilience after the end of its WTO funding. The chair holder was able to get funds from several partners to launch new collaborative projects. In a nice example of responsiveness to social demand, the WTO Chair in Tunisia partnered with the French Institute of Development to explore the impact of COVID 19 on firms in Tunisia and in developing countries in general. The latter project is funded by the French Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis (ANRS).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Professor of Economics, University of Geneva
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Director, World Trade Institute
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Senior Trade Specialist, World Bank Group
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Country Director at International Growth Centre
One of the unsung virtues of the WTO Chairs Program has been its catalytic role in prompting South-South discussions of trade and cross-country learning. Two small examples illuminate that point. The WTO Chair in South Africa, Prof. Wilma Viviers, had created a wonderful tool for helping governments direct their scarce resources promoting export. The tool, called the Decision Support Model, used detailed WTO product level data configured as a decision tree to identify potential, high value added exports. While working on Rwanda, I was delighted to enlist the South African team's support to provide analysis to Rwandan officials, and their 172 page report proved to be of enormous value. A second example was the request of the Chile WTO Chair, Prof. Dorotea Lopez Giral, to discuss the effects of Covid-19 on African trade to a University of Chile audience. Connecting up three continents, the Kenyan WTO Chair, Prof. Tabitha Kirti in Nairobi, and I from Washington, conducted a wonderful discussion with a Chilean audience. These types of connections would simply have not happened had it not been for the WTO Chairs program.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- CIGI Distinguished Fellow
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Partner at IDEAS Centre, Professor of International Trade Law
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Director of Regional Integration and Trade Division, UNECA
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Executive Director of the Trade Law Centre for Southern Africa ( TRALAC )