Recent literature has shown evidence of positive contributions of export promotion agencies around the world in raising exports, through the intensive and extensive margins of trade. The number of export promotion agencies has increased substantially over the past two decades, and most of them...

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...

This paper characterizes the trade-off between the income gains and the inequality costs of trade using survey data for 54 developing countries. Tariff data on agricultural and manufacturing goods are combined with household survey data on detailed income and expenditure patterns to estimate the...

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...

This paper is the first in a series of studies to provide background data and protection and incentive indicators for 13 major Indian crops, which have been estimated in connection with extensive research on Indian agricultural incentives. The general methodology of the studies is described in...

This paper investigates the link between competitive, well-functioning food markets and consumer welfare. The paper explores two key food markets in Kenya -- sugar and maize -- and argues that a variety of factors conspire to distort market prices upward. Distortionary factors include import...

This paper analyzes Zambian export patterns using a new transaction-level trade data set for the period 1999-2011. The data show that, in international comparison, Zambian exports are exceptionally concentrated (on mining products). This reliance has been increasing in recent years. Zambia's...