The Marrakesh Agreement establishing the WTO recognizes the need for positive efforts designed to ensure that developing countries and especially the least developed among them secure a share in the growth in international trade commensurate with the needs of their economic development.This...

We use panel data for listed firms from China for 2013-2021 to examine the association between their export earnings and trade finance, particularly those receiving trade loans. Results show that a percent increase in trade finance loan is associated with 0.067-0.083 percent increase in export...

This paper presents the services trade restrictiveness indices (STRIs) for logistics 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...

A country or firm's position in the value chain will largely depend on its comparative advantage, and therefore the mix of skills and resource endowments it brings to international production. For some, this might initially involve specialising in the labour intensive segments while others may...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in generating economic activity and employment in developing and developed countries. However, partly due to remaining at-the-border trade costs, SMEs continue to be less represented in international trade – as direct exporters...

Although global value chain (GVCs) participation in Southeast Asia has been growing, little is known about whether the benefits from participation are accruing to larger firms or if small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), which make up the majority of companies and employ the bulk of the...

This paper provides an economic analysis of the trade conflict between the US and China, providing an overview of the tariff increases, a discussion of the background of the trade conflict, and an analysis of the economic effects of the trade conflict, based both on empirics (ex post analysis)...

The rapid rise in global fragmentation - foreign investment, global supply chains, and 'production sharing' - is fundamentally reshaping the multilateral trading system. This paper uses a simple economic modeling framework to understand how the global fragmentation phenomenon may reshape the...

Geopolitical conflicts have increasingly been a driver of trade policy. We study the potential effects of global and persistent geopolitical conflicts on trade, technological innovation, and economic growth. In conventional trade models the welfare costs of such conflicts are modest. We build a...

In theory, e-commerce marketplaces connect buyers and sellers, open trade opportunities, and reduce transaction costs thereby creating opportunities for more inclusive trade and even GVC participation, especially for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Further, there is some...