Traditional weighted-average measures of trade distortions are widely used in analyzing global and regional reforms, despite well-known deficiencies. This paper develops and applies optimal aggregators for the real-world case of multiple countries and commodities with much more detailed...

This paper studies a simple, tractable model of labor adjustment in a trade model that allows researchers to analyze the economy's dynamic response to trade liberalization. Since it is a neoclassical market-clearing model, duality techniques can be employed to study the equilibrium and, despite...

The current political turmoil for more open and participative societies in many Arab countries coupled with the emergence of new growth poles around the world could create the conditions for a big push toward greater regional and global trade integration of the Arab world. Further integrating...

Given the growing importance of commitments to foreign investors in services in regional trade agreements, it is important to develop applied general equilibrium models to assess the impacts of liberalization of barriers to multinational service providers. This paper develops a 55 sector applied...

Because of concern that OECD tariff reductions will translate into worsening export performance for the least developed countries, trade preferences have proven a stumbling block to developing country support for multilateral liberalization. The authors examine the actual scope for preference...

The author investigates the effects of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) on bilateral trade flows using a comprehensive database of PTAs in force and a detailed matrix of world trade. He shows that total trade between PTA partners is a poor proxy for preferential trade (trade in tariff lines...

The WTO has delivered policy outcomes that are very different from those likely to emerge out of the recent wave of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Should economists see this as an efficient institutional hand-off, where the WTO has carried trade liberalization as far as it can manage, and...

The authors provide an overview of the preferential rules of origin in East Asia, highlighting the aspects that might possibly generate some trade-chilling effects. They review characteristics of existing preferential trade agreements with special emphasis on lessons from the European...

This paper examines the growth effects of different dimensions of international trade integration -- notably, volume, diversification, and natural resource dependence -- in Sub-Saharan Africa. First, the paper documents the recent trends in these foreign trade dimensions for the region and the...

Deepening real and financial integration of developing countries into the world economy has prompted renewed interest in the contribution of external shocks to their macroeconomic fluctuations. This paper revisits the issue using four decades of annual data for a large sample of developing...