One-fifth of the world's population lives in countries affected by fragility, violence and conflict, impeding long-term economic growth. However, little is known about how firms respond to local changes in security, partly because of the difficulty of measuring firm activity in these settings....

An important recent World Trade Organization dispute settlement case for many developing countries concerned European Union exports of sugar. Brazil, Thailand, and Australia alleged that the exports have substantially exceeded permitted levels as established by European Union commitments in the...

Statutory marketing boards that have exclusive authority to purchase domestic production, sell for export, and set purchase and sales prices of commodities are a type of state trading enterprise that is subject to World Trade Organization disciplines. This paper assesses a recent dispute brought...

Since the mid 1980s a substantial amount of research has been undertaken on trade in services. Much of this is inspired by the World Trade Organization or regional trade agreements, especially the European Union, but an increasing number of papers focus on the impacts of services sector...

The authors analyze the extent to which the EU-15 and 16 transition economies used the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to commit to service sector policy reforms. They compare GATS commitments with the evolution of actual policy stances over time. While there is substantial...

This paper examines how the applied multi-sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) literature has moved into quantication of the impacts of greater market access for services. This includes discussion of multi-sector linkages to the service sector, as well both measuring barriers to trade and...

Global commodity markets are affected by a variety of government policies that may expand or lower overall supply and as a result affect world prices for the specific products concerned. Market failures and market structures (market power along the value chain) also affect supply. This paper...

The collapse in trade and contraction of output that occurred during 2008-09 was comparable to, and in many countries more severe than, the Great Depression of 1930, but did not give rise to the rampant protectionism that followed the Great Crash. Theory suggests several hypotheses for why it...

This paper summarizes the major arguments and proposals to reform the modus operandi of the World Trade Organization --including decision-making procedures, negotiating modalities, and dispute settlement. Much has already been done to improve the internal and external transparency of World Trade...

Trade and investment in services are inhibited by a range of policy restrictions, but the best offers so far in the Doha negotiations are on average twice as restrictive as actual policy. They will generate no additional market opening. Regulatory concerns help explain the limited progress. This...