We study the effect of services trade restrictiveness on manufacturing productivity for a broad cross-section of countries at different stages of economic development. Decreasing services trade restrictiveness has a positive indirect impact on the manufacturing sectors that use services as...

Governments increasingly are seeking to use bilateral and regional trade agreements to reduce the cost-increasing effects of differences in product market regulation. They also pursue regulatory cooperation independent of trade agreements. It is important to understand what is being done through...

Many agreements to liberalize trade in services tend to be limited in scope. Concerns about possible negative regulatory consequences of services liberalization is one reason for this. In this paper we provide quantitative estimates of the impact of governance quality on the magnitude of the...

At the 9th Ministerial Conference of the WTO in Bali it was agreed to develop a work program to conclude the long-running Doha round. This report argues that any work program should recognize that goods and services are increasingly produced in international supply chains. Many of the policies...

The EU’s common commercial policy is used as an instrument to realize its values in EU trading partners, reflected in the inclusion of sustainable trade and development chapters in EU preferential trade agreements (PTAs). In this paper we ask if including non-trade provisions (NTPs) in EU PTAs...

This paper provides the first quantitative evidence on the restrictiveness of services policies in 2016 for a sample of developing countries, based on recently released regulatory data collected by the World Bank and WTO. We use machine learning to recreate to a high degree of accuracy the...

The deadlock in the WTO Doha Round has been accompanied by an increased focus on the negotiation of preferential trade agreements, including so-called ‘mega-regionals'. This paper discusses possible implications for — and possible responses by — excluded countries that have little...

Many countries, including China, European member states, the European Union, India and the United States have put in place measures to restrict exports of medical products as part of their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective is to allocate domestic supplies to national healthcare...

This paper examines some of the features of rules of origin (RoO) that makes these policy instruments nontariff measures, reflects on the causes of the longstanding deadlock in the WTO on multilateral harmonization of non-preferential RoO, and reviews recent trends in RoO included in recent...

This paper reviews elements of the history of association agreements between the EU and countries that are covered by the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). It considers the rationale for negotiation of Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas with neighbouring countries based on research that...