This paper presents new high frequency data on trade policy changes targeting medical and food products since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, documenting how countries used trade policy instruments in response to the health crisis on a week-by-week basis. The dataset reveals a rapid...

This paper briefly reviews new indices of trade restrictiveness and trade facilitation that have been developed at the World Bank. The paper also compares the trade impact of different types of trade restrictions applied at the border with the effects of domestic policies that affect trade...

The EU’s common commercial policy is used as an instrument to realize its values in EU trading partners, reflected in the inclusion of sustainable trade and development chapters in EU preferential trade agreements (PTAs). In this paper we ask if including non-trade provisions (NTPs) in EU PTAs...

This paper provides the first quantitative evidence on the restrictiveness of services policies in 2016 for a sample of developing countries, based on recently released regulatory data collected by the World Bank and WTO. We use machine learning to recreate to a high degree of accuracy the...

The realization of many of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) depends on bolstering the performance of services sectors and improving access to specific services in developing countries. We show that prevailing services trade and investment policies impact on access to services that matter...

This paper analyzes a prominent dimension of the initial policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic observed in many countries: the imposition of export restrictions and actions to facilitate imports. Using weekly data on the use of trade policy instruments during the first seven months of the...

This paper analyzes the linkage between services and manufacturing productivity performance, using firm-level data for over 100 developing countries. We find strong evidence for such a linkage, although the effect is small: at the average rate of services input intensity, a 10% improvement in...