To understand the role of trade policies in the crisis of 2008, this paper constructs the overall trade restrictiveness indices for a wide range of countries using their tariff schedules in 2008 and 2009. The index summarizes the trade policy stance of a country, taking into account the share of...

The short-term impact of Brexit on goods exports is assessed using the Overall Trade Restrictiveness Index of the United Kingdom's major trading partners. The analysis shows that in the short run, leaving the European Union may cause the United Kingdom's exports to the European Union to decrease...

Similar to tariffs, non-tariff measures may induce trade fraud when they are restrictive. This paper examines whether discrepancies observed in the official trade statistics of importing and exporting countries are partly due to trade fraud from evading border non-tariff measures. To capture the...

Bilateral trade relationships between countries vary across products. Such heterogeneity poses challenges when assessing the economic impacts of trade agreements. This paper estimates bilateral trade elasticities at the product level and explores these impacts using a hypothetical no-deal Brexit...

"To study the effects of tariffs on gross domestic product (GDP), one needs import demand elasticities at the tariff line level that are consistent with GDP maximization. These do not exist. Kee, Nicita, and Olarreaga modify Kohli's (1991) GDP function approach to estimate demand elasticities...

This paper quantifies trade policy changes and the associated trade impacts for about 100 countries between 2008 and 2009. Results show that there has been no widespread increase in protectionism. Only a few countries, including Russia, Argentina, Turkey, and China, have increased tariffs on...