Trade rebounded in 2017, with trade volume growing at 4.3 percent in 2017 - the fastest rate in 6 years. The recovery of trade is not limited to a few regions but is widespread, suggesting that we may be at a turning point. The largest contributions to global trade growth have come from East...

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....

There is growing clamor in industrial countries for additional border taxes on imports from countries with lower carbon prices. The authors confirm the findings of other research that unilateral emissions cuts by industrial countries will have minimal carbon leakage effects. However, output and...

June 2000 - Members of the World Trade Organization have decided provisionally to exempt electronic delivery of products from customs duties. There is growing support for the decision to be made permanent. Is this desirable? Some countries in the World Trade Organization initially opposed WTO's...

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...

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...

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...