Recent years have witnessed an ever-increasing resort to export restrictions in the markets for raw materials, causing heightened uncertainty about supply availability together with friction among trading partners. Poor transparency can amplify and compound the effects of restrictive trade...

The incidence of export taxes, prohibitions and other measures that raise export prices, limit export quantities or place conditions on exporting is on the rise. Transparency can help mitigate the negative effects of export restrictions by enabling affected stakeholders to better understand and...

This paper presents the services trade restrictiveness indices (STRIs) for financial services. The STRIs are composite indices taking values between zero and one, zero representing an open market and one a market completely closed to foreign services providers. The indices are calculated for 40...

This study analyses trade flows in intermediate goods and services among OECD countries and with their main trading partners. Combining trade data and input-output tables, bilateral trade in intermediate goods and services is estimated according to the industry of origin and the using industry...

The number of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) have increased markedly over the last decade, with many addressing market openness and rule-making for services trade. Recent RTAs are breaking down existing barriers: on average, removing between 10% and 40% of services restrictions present in the...

Trade facilitation measures are key in offsetting some of the time and cost increases experienced by firms and consumers against a backdrop of continued supply chain disruptions. Through the lens of the updated OECD Trade Facilitation Indicators (TFIs), this paper assesses progress and...

3D printing technologies have attracted the attention of the trade policy community for their potential to disrupt international trade. It is argued that greater cross-border exchange in design files for local printing may lead to less trade in physical goods. New evidence presented in this...

Services play a more important role in trade and employment in the United Kingdom than in most other OECD countries. The UK services sector is supported by an open and transparent trade regime, policies that support competition and innovation, and regulatory transparency that facilitates the...

Closing gender gaps makes good economic sense. Advancing the aim of women’s economic empowerment will require policy action across a wide range of areas, including increasing their participation in international trade. Although trade policies are not de jure discriminatory, they impact women...

Data flows across border underpin today’s digitalised and globally interconnected world, but have also given rise to a range of concerns, including about privacy protection, intellectual property protection, regulatory reach, competition, and industrial policy. This has led to the emergence of...