When looking at the conditions of trade in natural resources the world appears upside down: tariff protection in natural resources sectors is generally lower than for overall merchandise trade, while export restrictions are twice as likely as in other sectors. On the other hand, tariff...

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) on services have proliferated since 2000. This working paper briefly presents the expansion of the dataset initially developed in Marchetti and Roy (2008). The data permits to assess the extent to which market access commitments undertaken by WTO Members in...

This paper studies the relationship between export policy and food prices. We show that, when individuals are loss averse, food exporters may use trade policy to shield the domestic economy from large price shocks. This creates a complementarity between the price of food in international markets...

The creation of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), in the Uruguay Round, and its entry into force in 1995 marked a new stage in the history of the multilateral system. It was motivated essentially by the rapid expansion of international services trade within an increasingly open...

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is broader in policy coverage than conventional trade agreements for goods and, at the same time, offers governments more flexibility, in various dimensions, to tailor their obligations to sector- or country-specific needs. An overview of...

To date, government procurement has been effectively carved out of the main multilateral rules of the WTO system. This paper examines the systemic and other ramifications of this exclusion, from both an economic and a legal point of view. In addition to relevant elements of the WTO Agreements,...

There has been virtually no liberalization under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to date. Most existing commitments are confined to guaranteeing the levels of access that existed in the mid-1990s, when the Agreement entered into force, in a limited number of sectors. The only...

This paper discusses the opportunities and challenges for Southern and Eastern African ACP countries of services negotiations in the context of European Partnership Agreements. The paper provides an overview of existing flows in services from and to Southern and Eastern Africa, an overview that...

Far less attention is given to the even more rapid proliferation of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and their overlap with obligations assumed by WTO Members under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). About 60 per cent of world foreign investment stocks are in services and,...

The Harmonized System is normally amended by the World Customs Organization every four to six years. These amendments pose considerable challenges for the WTO and its Members. On the one hand, Members need to periodically update their historical schedules of concessions into the latest...