This paper assesses how regional trade agreements (RTAs) impact growth volatility on a worldwide sample of 170 countries with data spanning the period 1978-2012.Notwithstanding concerns that trade openness through RTAs can heighten exposure to shocks, in particular when it leads to increased...

Global trade growth has slowed since 2012 relative both to its strong historical performance and to overall economic growth. This paper aims to quantify the role of weak economic growth and changes in its decomposition in accounting for the slowdown in trade using a reduced form and a structural...

Economic theory suggests that countries’ tariff commitments in trade agreements reflect their import market power at the time of negotiations. However, as countries grow, their market power in different sectors can change in unforeseen ways and their commitments may no longer reflect changed...

International trade is vital for economic prosperity in Pacific island countries, but their trade performance has been weak over the past decade with the exception of resource-rich countries. Small country size and remoteness from global economic centers may have contributed to this relatively...

This paper studies the relationship between trade policy and food prices. We show that, when individuals are loss averse, governments may use trade policy to shield the domestic economy from large food price shocks. This creates a complementarity between the price of food in international...

Largely because of its vast copper reserves, Chile’s exports are highly concentrated on this low complexity product and this is often cited as a major drawback of its economic policy framework. However, its exogenous copper abundance conceals the country’s success in developing non-mineral...

This paper studies the potential for the export sector to play a more important role in promoting growth in Central America, Panama, and the Dominican Republic (CAPDR) through deeper intra-regional and global trade integration. CAPDR countries have enacted many free trade agreements and other...

Trade liberalization leads to long-run gains, but it can also involve costly short-run macroeconomic adjustment. The paper explores the relative importance of these effects within a dynamic general equilibrium model that captures key elements of both international trade and macroeconomic models....

The paper summarizes how Japan`s foreign exchange and trade control system operated in the early 1950s, how and how effectively it was used as a tool of external adjustment, and how it was liberalized from the late 1950s into the early 1960s. Although the Japanese government was extensively...