In the 2001 Doha Development Round ministerial declaration, countries committed themselves “to the objective of duty-free, quota-free market access for products originating from LDCs.” In this light, this paper investigates the current tariff barriers put in place and preferences granted by...

This paper discusses the challenges confronting developing countries seeking to use WTO negotiations to promote their economic growth and performance. Progress will require that major stakeholders within countries perceive the overall package to be beneficial. A number of possible focal points...

If South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are to become constructively engaged in the next attempt by World Trade Organization (WTO) members to liberalize trade multilaterally, they need to be convinced that there will be sufficient gains from trade reform to warrant the inevitable costs of...

In a production structure reasonable for a developing economy this note shows that there may arise a conflict between the worldwide liberalized trade policies in agriculture, which raise the price of the economy’s primary exportable commodity, and the inflow of foreign capital into the...

In this paper we evaluate the potential benefits of international disciplines on policies towards foreign direct investment, paying particular attention to developing countries. We conclude that, at present, the case for initiating negotiations on investment policies is weak. Negotiations that...

The Free Trade Area of the Americas FTAA will increase import competition for some forest product industries in Alabama but create export opportunities for others. Forest products loom large in the Alabama economy, both in terms of income and pollution. The present paper gauges the potential...

Despite economic theory and empirical literature that have shown that wide availability of business services contributes significantly to productivity gains and growth, economic modelers have been slow to meaningfully incorporate services into their models. This paper employs a 52-sector, small,...

Market access liberalization has influenced product-specific growth of world exports and contributed to the shift in the structure of world exports of manufactures towards electrical and electronic goods (including parts and components), goods that require high R&D expenditures, and...

This paper disentangles trans-Tasman intra-industry trade (IIT) into horizontal IIT (HIIT) and vertical IIT (VIIT), and uses country-specific features to investigate their determinants in an econometric framework. Results suggest that trans-Tasman IIT is dominated by VIIT and concentrates mainly...

This paper analyses the extent to which preferential trade agreements can lead to the substitution of non-tariff barriers for tariffs, and the effects of non-tariff barriers on welfare and other parameters. Its main results are that non-tariff barriers reduce aggregate welfare, and that the...