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...

Natural resources account for 20% of world trade, and dominate the exports of many countries. Policy is used to manipulate both international and domestic prices of resources, yet this policy is largely outside the disciplines of the WTO. The instruments used include export taxes, price...

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...

One of the goals of the multilateral trading system is to enhance the stability and predictability of the environment in which traders operate.Binding tariffs at the WTO reduces the scope for their discretionary use. But, countries have bound tariffs at ceiling levels often substantially above...

This paper studies the effects of trade policy uncertainty on the extensive and the intensive margins of trade for a sample of 149 exporters at the HS6 digit level. We measure trade policy uncertainty as the gap between binding tariff commitments under trade agreements (multilateral and regional...

While greater focus has been cast on analysis of policy changes affecting trade in goods in the aftermath of the financial crisis, little is known about the direction of policies affecting trade in services. On the basis of information contained in the I-TIP Services database, this paper...

Policy commitment and credibility are important for inducing agents to make costly, irreversible investments. Policy uncertainty can delay investment and reduce the response to policy change. I provide theoretical and novel quantitative evidence for these effects by focusing on trade policy, a...

A second approach focuses on the relationships existing between the variables themselves, using multi-criteria and graph analysis. Natural resources endowments, on the one hand, and services orientation, on the other one, are among the most determinant variables for defining Trade in Value Added...

In addition to cross-border supply, the Agreement covers three additional types of transactions, i.e. the supply of services via consumer movements abroad as well as the presence of foreign firms and foreign service professionals in the respective markets. At the same time, the GATS accommodates...

We try to achieve this objective in four steps. First, we focus on the original Armington CES gravity model, as a representative framework for a large class of GE models, to offer a deep analysis of the structural relationships underlying the general equilibrium gravity system, and how they can...