The Agreement on Trade Facilitation (TFA) embodies the first set of new multilateral rules to have been negotiated under auspices of the WTO, part of a small package of decisions centering on matters of interest to developing countries that was “harvested” from the broader Doha round. This...

This paper first briefly describes the role of the WTO and its history. It then lays out a simple bargaining model of international negotiations, which can be used for understanding the Doha round of talks. This simple framework is used to distil and discuss a number of potential explanations...

Textile and clothing (T&C) industry has experienced important developments since 1994. The most important is that Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) signed (1994) under supervision of World Trade Organization. The system governing T&C trade for more than 40 years has expired by means of...

This paper presents the services trade restrictiveness indices (STRIs) for financial services. The STRIs are composite indices taking values between zero and one, zero representing an open market and one a market completely closed to foreign services providers. The indices are calculated for 40...

This Paper discusses the challenges confronting developing countries seeking to overcome discrimination in world trade rules and policies. The major sources of discrimination in both developed and developing countries in the areas of market access opportunities and WTO disciplines are briefly...

Poor countries are rarely challenged in formal WTO trade disputes for failing to live up to commitments, reducing the benefits of their participation in international trade agreements. This paper examines the political-economic causes of the failure to challenge poor countries and discusses the...

This Paper analyses what actions could be taken in the context of the WTO Doha negotiations to assist countries to benefit from deeper trade integration. It discusses the policy agenda that confronts many developing countries and identifies a number of focal points that could be used both as...

High levels of protection and domestic support for farmers in developed countries significantly affect many least developed countries (LDCs), both directly and through the price-depressing effect of agricultural support policies. High tariffs and domestic support may also lower the world price...

Little progress has been made since the creation of the WTO in expanding and deepening the coverage of services liberalization commitments. This paper identifies and discusses five hypotheses that may explain the absence of dynamism: (i) technological changes allow ever more services to be...

This study analyses trade flows in intermediate goods and services among OECD countries and with their main trading partners. Combining trade data and input-output tables, bilateral trade in intermediate goods and services is estimated according to the industry of origin and the using industry...