This paper develops a new version of the GTAP database in which Canada is replaced by its provinces in order to allow the analysis of international trade agreements at a subnational level. The methodology in effect treats the individual provinces as separate trading entities, much like the...

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...

This paper analyzes the impact of the Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement on the basis of the published text and agreed schedule of commitments. We find that the Agreement reinforces existing patterns of comparative advantage between Canada (agriculture and resource-based sectors) and Korea (autos...

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...

This note is motivated by the contradictory conclusions reached concerning the amount of trade generated by trade agreements of varying comprehensiveness and depth when agreements are examined through different prisms: analysis of the text of agreements with a view to identifying liberalizing...

This paper considers the trade and trade-related policy implications of the heterogeneous firms trade literature developed in the context of “new new trade theory”. The recognition in trade theory of firm-level heterogeneity and of the complex global strategies of multinational firms has not...

In the context of stalled multilateral trade negotiations, major trading economies are seeking free trade agreements (FTAs) to secure their market access objectives. Nowhere is this dynamic stronger than in East Asia, where a web of bilateral and plurilateral agreements is stitching together...

This paper considers the reasons why APEC's potential remains, after its first decade in existence, as yet largely unfulfilled. APEC’s progress is assessed in terms of three periods: 1989 through 1992, when it was primarily in an exploratory mode, probing for direction and ways and means for...

The BRICs economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China) created a buzz with a strong run in the global expansion of the 2000s and the help of a little pumping up of their tires by Goldman Sachs analysts who projected these economies would surpass the advanced countries within a few decades. The...

The Trump Administration made a fundamental break with longstanding US trade policy. This break might be explained as expressing Trump’s affinity for traditional American isolationism. In some respects, it might also be described as an expression of strongly held personal views of Trump’s...