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 Marrakesh Agreement establishing the WTO recognizes the need for positive efforts designed to ensure that developing countries and especially the least developed among them secure a share in the growth in international trade commensurate with the needs of their economic development.This...

This study provides a decomposition of the WTO Global Trade Costs Index into five policy-relevant components: transport and travel costs; information and transaction costs; ICT connectedness; trade policy and regulatory differences; and governance quality. The WTO Global Trade Costs Index is...

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...

We investigate to what extent the probability that a Specific Trade Concern (STC) is raised in the WTO against a Member in a given sector is affected by past reductions in applied tariffs. Employing an identification strategy based on “new measures”, we find evidence of a substitution of...

This study analyses the role of Aid for Trade in reducing trade costs in least developed countries (LDCs). The analysis builds on questionnaires and case stories submitted as part of the Aid-for-Trade monitoring and evaluation exercise for the Fifth Global Review of Aid for Trade. Trade costs...

This paper assesses the impact of the 2005 multilateral Hong Kong Ministerial decision on duty free quota free (DFQF) market access for products originating in Least developed countries (LDCs) on the latter's export performance. The analysis is conducted over a sample of 41 LDCs, with data...

While conditions in trade finance markets returned to normality in the main routes of trade, the structural difficulties of poor countries in accessing trade finance have not disappeared – and might have been worsened during and after the global financial crisis. There is a consistent flow of...

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...