This paper uses a case study approach to explore the effects of NAFTA and GATT membership on innovation and trade in the Mexican soaps, detergents, and surfactants (SDS) industry. Several basic findings emerge. First, the most fundamental effect of the NAFTA and the GATT on the SDS industry was...

The Islamic Republic of Iran has committed itself to substantial trade and market reform in its Third Five-Year Development Plan. It started out with nontariff barriers on all products, a dual exchange rate regime with the market rate more than four times the official rate, and domestic energy...

This paper empirically studies the dynamics of labor market adjustment following the Brazilian trade reform of the 1990s. The paper uses variation in industry-specific tariff cuts interacted with initial regional industry mix to measure trade-induced local labor demand shocks and examines...

Using data from Mexico, the authors study empirically the link between trade policy and individual income risk and the extent to which this varies across workers of different human capital (education) levels. They use longitudinal income data on workers to estimate time-varying individual income...

This paper provides new estimates of the global gains from multilateral trade reform and their distribution among developing countries in the presence of trade preferences. Particular attention is given to agriculture, as farmers constitute the poorest households in developing countries but are...

There is a growing literature that investigates the effect of trade liberalization on productivity. Nearly all such studies assume that trade policy is determined independently of productivity, hence it is exogenous. The author shows that this assumption is not valid in general, both...

Improved competitiveness is at the top of the agenda for Mexico as it moves to leverage economic progress made over the past decade. The authors evaluate the impact of changes in trade facilitation measures on trade for main industrial sectors in Mexico. They use four indicators of trade...

The authors examine the effects of WTO agreements and domestic trade policy reforms on production, welfare, and poverty in Bangladesh. They use a sequential dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, which takes into account accumulation effects, allowing for long-run analysis. The...

Mexico's creation and use of safeguard and antidumping processes to advance its liberalization illustrate three key points: (1) The country was able to use the instruments without losing political control. In a period of crisis that threatened congressional approval of critical steps in the...

This paper explores an empirical methodology to assess the impacts of trade reforms on household behavior in developing countries. It focuses on consumption and income responses: when price reforms take place, households modify consumption and production decisions and local labor markets adjust....