Bangladesh's international image is not as a popular tourism destination, and many people might be surprised to learn it has three World Heritage sites, including the Sundarbans tiger reserves. Moreover, it is part of important travel circuits for cultural and religious tourism, and has...

Pro-poor tourism is arguably one of the best green options for addressing LDC poverty, employment and economic diversification initiatives. Although often neglected as a serious policy option - and consequently most of its potential still remains untapped - tourism is the leading export for at...

As governments increasingly adopt policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, concern has grown on two fronts. First, carbon leakage can occur when mitigation policies are not the same across countries and producers seek to locate in jurisdictions where production costs are least affected by...

This Working Paper contains some observations concerning the evolution of trade and trade-related policies in the Asia-Pacific region since the establishment in 1989 of the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM), whose goal is to improve the transparency of these policies. It also draws some...

This paper provides an overview of institutional, economic and legal aspects of the relationship between national environmental policies and the multilateral trading system. In particular, it analyses some of the difficulties the WTO Dispute Settlement System faces when having to evaluate...

This paper shows that environmental, labour and other standards can be effective strategic policy instruments even when they are strictly non-discriminatory. This is because standards can be set which the low cost producer optimally chooses not to meet, allowing the high cost producer to...

The system of global agricultural and food trade is undergoing rapid processes of change, with important implications for economic development. In this paper we document and discuss these changes; including the rapid growth and structural change in agri-food trade, the increased consolidation in...

Building on the results of the OECD-WTO Trade in Value-Added TiVA database, the paper analyses the evolution of effective protection in about 50 developed and developing countries from 1995 to 2008. The paper reviews also the role of preferential agreements on effective protection as well as the...

This paper gives insights into the possible trade creating effects of service trade liberalization via Mode 4. In particular we expect that temporary movements of persons, like permanent movements, have the potential to reduce transaction costs for merchandise trade between home and host...

In spite of their growing importance in international trade as well as in bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations, services have only attracted limited attention from researchers interested in determinants of trade policies and trade cooperation. This paper seeks to account for countries'...