This paper addresses the impact of Multilateral Trade Liberalisation (MTL) on the preferential tariffs granted by the United States. For a given MFN tariff, we model the preferential tariff with a simple linear functional form. We take MTL of the US as known to the world by the end of Uruguay...

This paper investigates whether the India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement (ISLFTA) has had trade creation or trade diversion effects on the rest of the World. The method used resembles the one used by Romalis (2005) to study NAFTA. In order to use the variations in tariff at the product level, we...

The paper aims to examine policy-anchor hypotheses by analysing the impact of WTO accession process on domestic economic policies and institutions of newly acceded WTO members. It shows that the process of obtaining WTO membership, under certain circumstances, can lead to a positive improvement...

This paper provides an empirical assessment of race-to-the-bottom unilateralism. It suggests that decades of unilateral tariff cutting in Asia?s emerging economies have been driven by a competition to attract FDI from Japan. Using spatial econometrics, I show that tariffs on parts and...

In this paper, we address the impact of multilateral trade liberalisation (MTL) on the preferential tariffs granted by the EU, who is one of the top traders as well as biggest contributors to MTL. We empirically address two important questions. First, if the MFN tariff for a product is higher,...

This paper investigates whether preferential trade agreements (PTA) promote exports to third nations through the expansion of the extensive margin (i.e. larger number of export goods). The analysis covers 11 South- South and South-North PTAs involving 36 countries that exported to 118 different...

This paper analyzes the spatial interdependence of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) in a cross-section framework using the Conta-gion Index proposed by Baldwin and Jaimovich (2010). A Bayesian heteroskedastic probit model is estimated, where a spatial lag is built based on the Contagion Index,...

We analyse the impact of relaxing rules of origin (ROOs) in a simple setting with heterogeneous firms that buy intermediate inputs from domestic and foreign sources. In particular, we consider the impact of switching from bilateral to diagonal cumulation when using preferences (instead of paying...

Export taxes usage has recently risen. They are widely presumed to affect trade, but the lack of data has prevented a systematic evaluation of their trade effects. Based on a new dataset of tax rates at the product level, this paper estimates the distortionary trade effects of export taxes. The...

The primary purpose of this paper is to seek empirical answers to the above question. Using a highly disaggregated bilateral trade flows at HS 6 digit level for African countries for a period 1995-2009 and a conditional logit technique, I find 3 main empirical results. First, intra-Africa...