DOES GLOBALIZATION WORK? Someone should find out.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) may be a lot of things--undemocratic, beholden to rich nations, subservient to multinational companies, pick your cliche--but it isn't stupid. Still smarting from the notorious failure of the 1999 WTO meetings in Seattle, where massive protests helped derail the launch of a new round of trade negotiations, the leaders of the Geneva-based multilateral group held their 2001 meetings in Doha, the capital of the tiny Arab state of Qatar. Pleading scarce hotel space, Qatari authorities limited the number of representatives from nongovernmental organizations. Free of the heckling of anarchists and save-the-whalers, representatives from the WTO's 142 member states gathered from November 9 to 14 to hammer out their differences on a series of contentious issues affecting global trade.

By most accounts, the meeting was successful, no mean feat since the WTO's mandate is to negotiate global trade agreements on a consensual basis. Most important, the member states agreed to embark on a new three-year round of talks (the "Doha Round") beginning this month with the goal of reducing trade barriers and providing a more level playing field for all countries. Some key compromises paved the way for such an agreement: For instance, European nations relented and allowed the final statement to indicate that future trade talks would include the elimination of long-cherished agricultural subsidies. The negotiators also promised to explore ways for poor nations to override pharmaceutical patents on medications needed for major public-health crises--a major victory for aids-ravaged nations, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Global leaders were quick to declare victory. "The countries of the world, rich and poor, have ironed out their differences to launch a trade round that will make all of us more prosperous," promised British Prime Minister Tony Blair. And the World Bank--not quite known for stellar forecasting--calculated that a new round of trade-opening plus other key reforms would add some $2.8 trillion to global income by 2015 and would eventually lift some 320 million people out of poverty.

It is hard to blame WTO members for their zeal. Just a few months before, many analysts were predicting the Doha meetings dead in the water. Yet, while most economists would agree on the long-term gains from increased trade, not all agree on how quickly we will get there, or on how those benefits will be distributed. Consider a recent article by economists Steve Dowrick of the Australian National University and J. Brad DeLong of the University of California, Berkeley, titled "Globalization and Convergence" and forthcoming in the edited volume Globalization in Historical Perspective from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Dowrick and DeLong examine whether the world displayed economic "convergence"--that is, the assimilation by poorer nations of the institutions, technologies, and productivity levels of the rich countries--during periods of high trade over the last 130 years.

The evidence is mixed. The authors find that during the first era of economic globalization (from 1870 to 1914), convergence was limited to a "charmed circle" of Western European economies. By contrast, when trade and integration beat a hasty retreat in the years between the two world wars, convergence actually expanded, with parts of Africa, Latin America, and the Soviet Union showing signs of catching up to the West. And with the expansion of world trade in the decades since the end of World War II, the club's membership has shown significant variations: The East Asian economies, as well as possibly China and India, have joined, but Latin America, Communist and post-Communist countries, and post-colonial Africa have fallen behind. Faced with such ambiguous results, the authors conclude that "there is little reason to be confident that opening doors to the world economy will guarantee a place at the High Table."

Why aren't studies such as Dowrick and DeLong's a more visible part of the debates on trade and globalization? Perhaps because trade economists have largely disregarded real-world, data-driven analysis. Thus argue Columbia University economists Donald R. Davis and David E. Weinstein in a working paper titled "What Role for Empirics in International Trade?" (published by the NBER in October 2001). Davis and Weinstein chide their fellow economists for being excessively enamored of the elegant theories that make up their field. "Empirical analyses with substantive insights about the features of the world we inhabit, but which are at times inconvenient for theory, languish in obscurity," argue the authors. So much so, they explain, that the last time new editors took over the prestigious Journal of International Economics, they felt compelled to institute an affirmative-action policy for empirical articles.

Rather than obsess over theoretical models that explain how international trade is supposed to work, researchers would do well to examine the hard data (on everything from wages to price levels to trade and production patterns) and determine how trade actually operates in practice. Many antitrade activists rely on anecdotal evidence--a factory closing here, a Nike sweatshop there--to draw larger conclusions about the negative impact of globalization. Meanwhile, the protrade camp responds with theory or, even worse, with derision. More real-world studies would not only help strengthen trade theory by highlighting inconsistencies and pointing out new avenues of research; they would also provide protrade groups with relevant responses to those who would seek to limit trade for spurious or even well-intentioned reasons. And who knows? Maybe someday the WTO will be able to meet wherever it wishes.

Carlos Lozada is associate editor of Foreign Policy magazine.