In the 90’s, the Mercosur countries experienced a strong growth of trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). To examine the relationship between FDI, trade and regional integration in the Mercosur, we tested different disaggregated gravity equations on trade and FDI flows between two Mercosur...

This paper develops a method to measure difficulties in market access over a large set of countries (both developing and developed) and industries, during the period 1980-2006. We use a micro-founded heterogeneous-consumers model to estimate the impact of national borders on global and regional...

Jordan has realized the necessity to pursue opportunities through integration into international production networks and cross-border trade. The country has recently undertaken ambitious reforms of its trade regime. These initiatives comprise the accession to the WTO in 2000, the signing of...

The Euro-Med Agreement between Tunisia and the European Union resulted in free bilateral trade for industrial products from January 1st, 2008. The stepwise dismantling of industrial tariff barriers vis-à-vis Tunisia’s main trading partner without encountering major disruptions in the domestic...

In comparison with other countries, Bolivia seems to face a gap in its capacity to take advantage of international market opportunities. Addressing the shortcomings in Bolivia’s export performance is a major challenge and requires attention to the incentives that actual and potential exporters...

As a landlocked country in East Africa, Uganda faces two major disadvantages concerning access to foreign markets. It does not have an immediate gateway to low-cost ocean transport, but first has to pass its imports and exports through neighboring countries by road or rail. Nor does it share a...

This paper reviews the trade policy situation in the Central African Republic (CAR) and identifies a number of key issues and challenges for the country. The focus of the study is thereby on how trade taxes and quantitative restrictions affect the goods sector. The analysis falls into three...

Nigeria’s trade policy is at a crucial turning point. Historically, the country has had a very restrictive import regime that generated substantial transfers to domestic producers and strong anti-export bias. Yet, in its current poverty reduction strategy, Nigeria identified deeper trade...

Over the past two decades, Tanzania has embarked on a marked liberalization of its trade regime. The Government wants this reform process to continue and sees international integration at the global and regional level as a means to achieve higher economic efficiency, productivity and...

We propose an empirical trade model to test for structural change and dynamic effects induced by free trade agreements for the Canadian and US economies. We estimated a translog Gross National Product (GNP) function along with output and factor shares and tested for structural change (abrupt or...