This paper looks at the political economy of merger policy under autarky and in international markets. We assume that merger policy is decided by antitrust authorities (whose objective is to maximize welfare) but can be influenced by governments, which are subject to lobbying by the firms (be...

Natural resources account for 20% of world trade, and dominate the exports of many countries. Policy is used to manipulate both international and domestic prices of resources, yet this policy is largely outside the disciplines of the WTO. The instruments used include export taxes, price...

The focus of trade policy has shifted in recent years from economy-wide reductions in tariffs and trade restrictions towards targeted interventions to facilitate trade and promote exports. Most of these latter interventions are based on the new mantra of "aid-for-trade" rather than on hard...

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...

Initiatives to improve market access for the poorest countries have recently been announced by the European Union, Japan and the United States. This Paper assesses the impact on Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) of these initiatives and others that might be taken. We find that fully unrestricted access...

While there is considerable empirical evidence on the impact of liberalizing trade in goods, the effects of services liberalization have not been empirically established. This study examines the link between services sector reforms and the productivity of manufacturing industries relying on...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) can take place either through the direct entry of foreign firms or the acquisition of existing domestic firms. The preferences of a foreign firm and the host country government over these two modes of FDI are examined in the presence of costly technology transfer....

The Doha Round must be concluded not because it will produce dramatic liberalization but because it will create greater security of market access. Its conclusion would strengthen, symbolically and substantively, the WTO’s valuable role in restraining protectionism. What is on the table would...

This paper discusses what could be done to expand services trade and investment through a multilateral agreement in the WTO. A distinction is made between market access liberalization and the regulatory preconditions for benefiting from market opening. We argue that moving forward on...

The negotiations on trade in services at the WTO have so far produced little liberalization beyond levels unilaterally undertaken by countries. One reason is the neglect of the traditional negotiating principle of reciprocity. In particular, there has been a failure to exploit the scope built...