This note discusses capital controls using insights from the trade policy literature. It highlights some key issues that have been neglected in the current international debate on capital controls. Capital is tradable in the same way as many goods and services are. As a result, much of the...

Proper measurement and aggregation of trade costs is of paramount importance for sound academic and policy analysis of the determinants - particularly those of policy - of economic outcomes. The international trade profession has witnessed signifcant new developments, both on the theoretical and...

In this paper, we investigate tourism-related policy approaches that WTO member countries adopted in the early weeks of the COVID-19 crisis. We highlight the need for stakeholders to coordinate their responses in order to mitigate the negative crisis effects and better prepare the sector for the...

The paper reviews a number of issues related to the use of currencies in international trade, more than one decade after the introduction of the euro and shortly after steps taken by the Chinese authorities to liberalize the use of the RMB in off-shore markets. Trade is an important factor in...

There has been virtually no liberalization under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to date. Most existing commitments are confined to guaranteeing the levels of access that existed in the mid-1990s, when the Agreement entered into force, in a limited number of sectors. The only...

This paper maps and examines the provisions on anti-dumping, countervailing duties and safeguards in seventy-four regional trade agreements (RTAs). The RTAs vary in size, degree of integration, geographic region and the level of economic development of their members. The key policy concern of...

Over the past months, it has become increasingly clear that the services negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda will not produce significant improvements on current commitments unless major new impetus is provided. In an introductory section, this paper discusses various impediments,...

The paper discusses the experience to date with the implementation and application of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), some ten years after its entry into force. One striking observation is the smooth functioning of the Agreement, which has created far less tensions and...