Template-type: ReDif-Paper 1.0 
Author-Name: Gehl Sampath, Padmashree
Author-Email: padmashree.gehl.sampath@unctad.org
Author-workplace-name: UNCTAD
Title: Regulating the digital economy: Are we moving towards a 'win-win' or a
	 'lose-lose'? 
Abstract: The digital economy has been growing by leaps and bounds in recent
	 years, mostly as a result of new digital technologies that are promoting 
	 a global transformation to industry 4.0. The resulting expansion of 
	 digital trade has sparked off a political and policy controversy on 
	 digital economy and e-commerce, where its boundaries stand and how best 
	 to regulate it. Policy discussions on the topic however do not take into 
	 account the true expanse of digital trade, which encompasses hardware, 
	 software, networks, platforms, applications and data as its core 
	 elements, and stretches the boundaries of e-commerce policy to trade in 
	 goods, services and intellectual property protection. This article 
	 focuses on the challenges in regulating the digital economy, with a 
	 particular focus on development, and offers a discussion of the 
	 interdependency between the economic, social, personal and developmental 
	 aspects of digital trade for developing countries. Section II opens with 
	 a detailed discussion on key digital technologies and their plausible 
	 impacts on employment globally and industrial catch-up of particular 
	 importance to developing countries, to highlight the divisive nature of 
	 digital technologies. Section III then analyses the unfulfilled promise 
	 of a pro-development perspective at the WTO looking at how 
	 multilateralism has currently failed e-commerce. In this section, the 
	 incoherence between digital realities and the policy debates at the WTO 
	 are presented to show how the institution might have become a means to 
	 legitimise national policies of industrialised countries on a universal 
	 level in this important area of policymaking. Norm-setting through FTAs 
	 is also analysed at length in section III of the article, which provides 
	 a comprehensive review of the plurilateral and bilateral policy 
	 developments in e-commerce. The ramifications for developing countries 
	 are discussed in the form of a couple of examples. Section IV presents 
	 some options for developing countries for the future at the national and 
	 international level.
Keywords: digital economy, e-commerce, industry 4.0, digital trade, robotics and
	 process automation, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, manufacturing,
	 development, trade, free trade agreements, digital industrial policy
Classification-JEL: L11, L23, L25, L41, L51, L81, L86, O19, O31, O33, O34, O38
Series: UNU-MERIT Working Papers
Creation-Date: 20180122
Number: 2018-005
File-URL: https://unu-merit.nl/publications/wppdf/2018/wp2018-005.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 275 kb
Handle: RePEc:unm:unumer:2018005