Although the key issue in the WTO negotiations on agriculture is subsidies reduction, the EU and USA still account more than 85% of the world agriculture subsidies. An important policy question confronting developing countries is whether the reduction agreed within the Hong Kong conference could...

This paper examines the recent emergence of mega–free trade agreements, namely, the Asian-centric Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. In a comparative context it discusses the rationale for...

A model is developed to estimate the effects of export subsidies on the supply of exports. With data for Costa Rica over the 1980s, it is shown that although the export subsidy scheme in operation led to an increase in exports, the direct fiscal costs of the scheme were substantial. Furthermore,...

This paper develops a methodology for predicting the impact of trade liberalization on exports by industry (3-digit ISIC) based on the pre-liberalization distribution of exports by product (5-digit SITC). Using the results of Kehoe and Ruhl (2013) that much of the growth in trade after trade...

The paper focuses on the importance of assumptions made about market structure and firm behavior in empirical trade policy analysis. The contribution to the relevant literature is 3-fold: first the paper develops two original models which incorporate imperfectly competitive market structures in...

Rapid economic growth in Asia (and some other emerging economies) has been shifting the global economic and industrial centres of gravity away from the north Atlantic, raising the importance of Asia in world trade, and boosting South–South trade. This paper examines how trade patterns are...

To analyze the effects of prospective policy changes, sectoral and economy-wide modelers need to begin with baseline estimates of policy induced price distortions. Global trade modelers mostly use the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) protection database, which currently relies heavily on...

This paper examines the ‘small share’ problem inherent within the constant elasticity of substitution Armington specification. As a de facto research tool in the quantitative trade literature, this structural bias plagues the results of numerous multi-region CGE studies. Kuiper and van...

Given the highly concentrated distribution of agricultural protection, allowing in the negotiations too many exceptions through sensitive products puts at risk the objectives of World Trade Organization. This issue is difficult to analyze with the commonly used applied trade models, because they...

The original EU Service Directive proposal met widespread opposition and was subsequently narrowed down. Some believed that the competition from the New Member States would endanger the situation of the “old” EU service providers. We assess the importance of the Service Directive for Poland...