The Australia–United States free trade agreement (AUSFTA) came into effect in 2005. It was the second preferential trade agreement that Australia signed, after its agreement with Singapore, and marked a departure from the primacy of Australia’s previous trade policy of unilateral...

The government announced in late 2009 that it would freeze tariffs at current levels until 2015 at the earliest. We examine the potential costs and benefits to the New Zealand economy of this policy decision using a recently-developed dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the New...

Trade policy reforms which lead to changes in world prices of agricultural commodities or domestic policies aimed at affecting agricultural prices are often seen as causing a policy dilemma : a fall in agricultural prices benefits poor urban consumers but hurts poor rural producers, while a rise...

The service sector is evolving. New services and new modes of delivering existing services have increased the complexities of services negotiations in the WTO and in FTAs. The WTO negotiations focus on market access but FTAs tend to go beyond market access to seeking regulatory commitments from...

Throughout Pakistans history, policy has sought to promote exports through government support and incentives. The government machinery is geared to export promotion especially through direct and indirect subsidies. Surprisingly, these policies have been continued without serious examination....

India-Sri Lanka Bilateral Free Trade Agreement signed in1998 was a pioneering attempt in the direction of trade liberalization in South Asian region. This paper examines the performance of the Agreement in the first six years of its coming into being and draws lessons from its success that could...

This paper seeks to examine how locking-in of Pakistans unilateral liberalization at the WTO/GATS and further liberalization of services trade would affect Pakistans competitiveness. Focusing on the opportunities and risks of such liberalization the paper discusses possible options regarding the...

This paper reports findings from the survey of Indias textiles and clothing exporters. The survey method has been used to identify and assess the impact of Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs) and the Cost of Compliance (COC) expenditure by the exporters. A structured questionnaire has been used to gather...

This paper contributes to two strands of literature on empirical models of trade flows and trade policy. The first and the older strand is that of gravity models of bilateral trade flows going back to Hans Linneman (1966) and Tinbergen (1962) and its recent applications, particularly by Adams et...

In this paper we examine the changing nature of Japans commercial policy over the last 25 years while reviewing Japans changing structure of trade, FDI and economy that underlay policy changes. We argue that until the late 1990s Japan adopted a two-track approach of relying on multilateral...