How should economists interpret current trade wars and the recent U.S. trade actions that have initiated them? This paper offers an interpretation of current U.S. trade actions that is at once more charitable and less forgiving than that typically offered by economic commentators. More...

Are changes in services markets provoking reform, restrictions, or inertia? To address this question, this paper draws on a new World Bank-World Trade Organization Services Trade Policy Database. The paper analyzes the services trade policies of 68 economies in 23 subsectors across five broad...

This paper describes the Services Trade Policy Database, a joint initiative by the World Bank and the World Trade Organization Secretariat, which builds on a database developed by the World Bank nearly 10 years ago and draws on a recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development...

Can regionalism do what multilateralism has so far failed to do?promote greater openness of services markets? Although previous research has pointed to the wider and deeper legal commitments under regional agreements as proof that it can, no previous study has assessed the impact of such...

The virus that triggered a localized shock in China is now delivering a significant global shock. This study simulates the potential impact of COVID-19 on gross domestic product and trade, using a standard global computable general equilibrium model. It models the shock as underutilization of...

Should the China-U.S. trade agreement prompt relief because it averts a damaging trade war or concern because selective preferential access for the United States to China's markets breaks multilateral rules against discrimination? The answer depends on how China implements the agreement....

The demand for accountability in aid-for-trade is increasing but monitoring has focused on case studies and impressionistic narratives. The paper reviews recent evidence from a wide range of studies, recognizing that a multiplicity of approaches is needed to learn what works and what does not....

This paper evaluates the effects of the FAMEX export promotion program in Tunisia on the performance of beneficiary firms. While much of the literature assesses only the short-term impact of such programs, the paper considers also the longer-term impact. Propensity-score matching,...

This paper uses the dramatic expansion of access to the Internet in China to analyze the impact of the Internet on firm performance. The paper combines firm-level production data with province-level information on Internet penetration to examine how the rollout of the Internet across Chinese...