This book assesses the impact and design of optimal strategies to implement existing agreements. It deals with issues such as removing the remaining barriers to trade, improving the institutional, regional, and global trade architecture, and promoting convergence and accumulation among the...

Rules of origin are a crucial market access instrument in the rapidly proliferating network of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) around the world. In this volume, Estevadeordal and Suominen reveal the protectionist impulses behind rules of origin, examine their impacts on international trade...

The proliferation of free trade agreements around the world has accentuated the role of preferential rules of origin (RoO) in global companies¿ sourcing and investment decisions. However, there are few theoretical and practically no empirical analyses on the effects of RoO on foreign direct...

This document summarizes the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) experience as one of the main sources of multilateral development financing in Latin America and the Caribbean. From 2000 to 2005, total financing for economic, social and institutional development projects amounted to US$38.7...

Rules of origin (RoO) are a central topic both in the Inter-Regional Association Agreement negotiations between the European Union (EU) and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), and in the 34-country negotiations of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The purpose of this paper is to...

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have proliferated over the past decade around the world to cover nearly half of global trade. The number of RTAs notified to the WTO is approaching 200, while the total number of RTAs around the world exceeds 300. The global RTA spree has forged a veritable...

This paper maps out Rules of Origin (RoO) in regional trade agreements (RTAs) around the world, and observes that the restrictiveness and complexity of RoO are driven by factors specific to each RTA, including economy size and level of development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent of liberalisation in RTAs in the Americas in comparison to agreements in other world regions, and to put forth policy recommendations for multilateralising the regional RTAs. While primarily focusing on market access in goods-and tariff...

The purpose of this document is to inform Bank staff and other interested parties about recent developments in integration and trade among the countries of the Western Hemisphere and between these and other countries and world regions.

The purpose of this article is to describe a new dataset on trade integration agreements here, preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) and other international agreements that can be employed to start mending the gaps in the literature on cooperation, and to develop a research agenda on the...