Current negotiations at the WTO’s Committee on Trade and Environment have made it conceivable that WTO members agree on selective tariff cuts for certain Environmentally Preferable Products, in an attempt to combine gains from trade and from cleaner production/consumption. This raises...

This paper explores whether the EU's Everything But Arms (EBA) scheme, under which exports from 50 least developed countries (LDCs) are admitted duty-free to the EU market, influenced the trajectory or pace of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform. It finds no evidence that it played a role...

Relating the collected customs duty to the value of imports enables to estimate a rate of applied duty that takes into account all the pricing components and their utilisation. Indeed, this ad-valorem equivalent integrates the complex dimensions of customs duties, the measures of exemption and...

This paper examines the methodological problems to define a modelling approach to assess the impact of full or limited bilateral liberalisation of agricultural trade flows in the Euro-Mediterranean region. The bilateral trade liberalisation process in the region is framed by complexity, in...

In the international trade literature there seems to be some confusion between "openness" and "protection" measures. The aim of this paper is to bring together the "state of the art" in quantifying trade policy measures, so we focus on the extent of the protection granted by policies rather than...

The paper provides background information regarding the EU policy on biofuels. The purpose is to assess whether this policy may lead to an increased use of European agricultural products to provide energy, or whether it is more likely that the EU will shift towards imports of biofuels. The paper...

MIRAGE is a multi-region, multi-sector computable general equilibrium model, devoted to trade policy analysis. It incorporates imperfect competition, horizontal and vertical product differentiation, and foreign direct investment, in a sequential dynamic set-up where installed capital is assumed...

The main provisions of the special and differential treatment (SDT) granted to developing countries in the agriculture and food sector under the present World Trade Organization agreements are presented. The different provisions seem to have had a limited impact on developing countries, and...

Since the Uruguay Round Agricultural Agreement (URAA) entered into force in 1994, tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) have become the most widely used trade policy instrument to improve agricultural market access while at the same time controlling import volumes. Until now, the MIRAGE CGE model only takes...

The European Union tariff schedule includes a large number of specific and composite tariffs as well as many tariff-rate quotas (TRQs), which affect the composition of imports. By altering price ratios between products with different unit values, both can generate the typical Alchian-Allen...