When national competitiveness is invoked as a policy objective, trade experts have learned to retort that countries don't trade, firms do. This focus on the importance of the firm in international trade is consistent with the most recent developments in trade theory, but policy needs to catch...

It is well established in theory that trade liberalization impacts on productivity through the reallocation of market share to more productive firms. Since more productive firms tend to pay higher wages, the market reallocation effect also increases average wages. In addition to these...

China’s WTO accession was a landmark event bringing one of the world’s major trading economies fully into the international rules-based system. The major features and implications of China’s accession agreement are reviewed and, given China’s success in trade and investment outside the...

The accelerated expansion of China’s trade and current account surpluses since 2004, and the associated expansion of China’s foreign exchange reserves in the context of very rapid investment-driven domestic economic growth and adverse movements in China’s terms of trade have led China’s...

As Ethiopia’s new government begins work in September 2010, it is armed with a new plan: the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP). Trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) figure in the new plan but less reliance is placed on FDI inflows than in the past and as much emphasis appears to be...

Is political compliance a precondition for healthy trade relations with China? The Chinese government frequently threatens that meetings between its trading partners' officials and the Dalai Lama will be met with animosity and ultimately harm trade ties with China. We run a gravity model of...

The Chinese government frequently threatens that meetings between its trading partners' officials and the Dalai Lama will be met with animosity and ultimately harm trade ties with China. We run a gravity model of exports to China from 159 partner countries between 1991 and 2008 to test to which...

The election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States raises a litany of questions about the future of US trade policy. Canada, along with Mexico, is particularly heavily exposed to trade with the United States and there is considerable speculation about how Canada should react if...

In these notes, I comment on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union, on its economics, and on its importance for the rules-based multilateral trading system at a time of disruptive change

The Trump Administration has pursued a sharply different – and for its trade partners unsettling – trade policy from that followed by the United States in the postwar period. While much attention has been focussed on the oftentimes contradictory, oftentimes theoretically unfounded, and...