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,...

We collect a novel dataset that covers about 130 countries and the six four-digit live animal categories in the Harmonized System (HS) over a sixteen-year period, to study the link between illicit trade in live animals and threat to animal health from infectious diseases.

Eighty countries and customs territories so far have introduced export prohibitions or restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic according to a new report by the WTO Secretariat. The report, which is based on information from official sources and news outlets, draws attention to the...

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...