At the recent World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar, WTO members called for the launch of negotiations on disciplines relating to competition based on explicit consensus on modalities to be agreed at the fifth WTO ministerial meeting in 2003. WTO discussions since...

This paper surveys the major options that have been proposed concerning a possible agreement on trade-related anti-trust principles and evaluates both their desirability and feasibility. Three criteria are used to evaluate the options: (i) the extent to which they enhance the contestability of...

This study confirms that substantial barriers to market access will remain in both rich and poor countries following full implementation of the Uruguay Round agreement. The analysis finds that around 40 percent of the costs of these barriers to developing countries arise from barriers to market...

The multilateral trade system rests on the principle of nondiscrimination. The most-favored-nation (MFN) clause embodied in article one of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was the defining principle for a system that emerged in the post, Second World War era, largely in reaction...

This paper briefly reviews new indices of trade restrictiveness and trade facilitation that have been developed at the World Bank. The paper also compares the trade impact of different types of trade restrictions applied at the border with the effects of domestic policies that affect trade...

This paper provides the first quantitative evidence on the restrictiveness of services policies in 2016 for a sample of developing countries, based on recently released regulatory data collected by the World Bank and WTO. We use machine learning to recreate to a high degree of accuracy the...

This paper briefly reviews new indices of trade restrictiveness and trade facilitation that have been developed at the World Bank. The paper also compares the trade impact of different types of trade restrictions applied at the border with the effects of domestic policies that affect trade...

The substantial literature investigating the links between trade, trade policy, and labor market outcomes-both returns to labor and employment-has generated a number of stylized facts, but many open questions remain. This paper surveys the subset of the literature focusing on trade policy and...

The substantial literature investigating the links between trade, trade policy, and labor market outcomes - both returns to labor and employment - has generated a number of stylized facts, but many open questions remain. This paper surveys the subset of the literature focusing on trade policy...

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...