Upon entry into the European Union, countries become members of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), with a derogation from adopting the euro as their currency (that is, each country joining the EU commits to replace its national currency with the euro, but can choose when to request...

Current U.S. trade policy stresses establishing free trade areas (FTAs) with partners spanning the globe. Motivations include enhancing goods and services trade; stimulating investment flows; extending standards on intellectual property rights, labor, and the environment; and addressing...

This paper assesses competitiveness in the case of the Central African Republic, a postconflict country. The paper presents several conventional techniques for assessing competitiveness, namely the real exchange rate and recent trade performance. Several other measures are considered, in...

This paper provides an empirical assessment of the degree of competition in Hong Kong SAR using industry-level data. Although due to data limitations only approximate measures of competitiveness can be estimated, the results do suggest that Hong Kong SAR is as competitive as a typical OECD...

This paper provides quantitative estimates of the impact of removing agricultural support (both tariffs and subsidies) in partial- and general-equilibrium frameworks. The results show that agricultural support in industrial countries is highly distortionary and tariffs have a larger...

This paper estimates the effects of trade liberalization on plant productivity. In contrast to previous studies, we distinguish between productivity gains arising from lower tariffs on final goods relative to lower tariffs on intermediate inputs. Lower output tariffs can produce productivity...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes economic growth in Iran. It uses a growth-accounting exercise to quantify the historical sources of growth over 1960–2002, including human capital accumulation and the contribution of Total Factor Productivity to growth. The paper presents an empirical...