This paper estimates the impacts on The Philippines of deep integration in a modern mega-preferential trade agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. The paper assesses how the results differ with three versions of market structure: (i) perfect competition, Armington style; (ii)...

How large are the estimated gains from trade from a reduction in trade costs in the heterogeneous firms Melitz (M) model compared with the Armington (A) and Krugman (K) models? Surprisingly little is known beyond the one-sector model. This paper analyzes this question using a global trade model...

Evidence indicates that trade costs are a much more substantial barrier to trade than tariffs are, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper decomposes trade costs into: (i) trade facilitation, (ii) non-tariff barriers, and (iii) the costs of business services. The paper assesses the poverty...

Despite a trend toward more flexible rates, more than half the world's countries maintain fixed or managed exchange rates. In the 1980s and 1990s, developing countries as a group progressively liberalized their trade regimes, but some governments defend their exchange rate in actions that run...

A new database on the barriers faced by foreign suppliers of services has been produced by the World Bank. Data for 103 countries are available on 11 of the most important services sectors in international trade. Based on these data and building on the methodology and publications supported by...

There is substantial evidence that with the progressive global decline in tariffs over several decades, trade costs are a more significant barrier to trade than tariffs, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper decomposes trade costs into three categories: costs that can be lowered by trade...

Export restraints by the Russian Federation on natural gas and timber have been the source of major controversy between the European Union and the Russian Federation. The analysis of this paper suggests that the export restraints in natural gas very substantially benefit Russia. On the other...

With the growing importance of services and foreign direct investment in services, it is important to have a framework to analyze the impact of the liberalization of barriers to foreign direct investment in services. This paper summarizes several recent papers and builds policy-based computable...

This report investigates the environmental impacts of Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization. A 10-region, 30-sector model of the Russian economy is developed. The model is innovative and more accurate empirically in that it contains foreign direct investment, imperfectly competitive...

Using a multisector, computable general equilibrium model, the authors examine Chile's strategy of negotiating bilateral free trade agreements with all of its significant trading partners (referring to this policy as additive regionalism). They also evaluate the Free Trade Agreement of the...