This paper empirically explores the political-economic determinants of why governments choose to tax or subsidize trade in agriculture. We use a new data set on nominal rates of assistance (NRA) across a number of commodities spanning the last four decades for 64 countries. NRAs measure the...

Little progress has been made since the creation of the WTO in expanding and deepening the coverage of services liberalization commitments. This paper identifies and discusses five hypotheses that may explain the absence of dynamism: (i) technological changes allow ever more services to be...

This paper discusses developing country interests regarding the inclusion of competition law disciplines in the WTO. Although developing countries have a great interest in pursuing an active domestic competition policy, this can and should be done independently of the WTO. Given the mercantilist...

Extensive research has demonstrated the existence of large potential welfare gains from measures to facilitate trade - reduce trade costs - for African countries in particular. However, concerns have been expressed by policymakers regarding the distribution of the benefits and costs of trade...

This paper analyses a number of the challenges confronting developing countries seeking to use the WTO Doha negotiations to promote their economic growth and performance. A precondition for success is to have clear objectives and to take a proactive stance. But a key necessary condition for...

Extensive research has demonstrated the existence of large potential welfare gains from trade facilitation - measures to reduce the overall costs of the international movement of goods. From an equity perspective an important question is how those benefits are distributed across and within...

A significant body of research has sought to examine claims that developing countries are under-represented as complainants, and/or over-represented as respondents in the WTO dispute settlement system. Most of this literature has focused on their propensity to participate, the idea being that...

Many agreements to liberalize trade in services tend to be limited in scope. Concerns about possible negative regulatory consequences of services liberalization is one reason for this. In this paper we provide quantitative estimates of the impact of governance quality on the magnitude of the...

A consequence of global trade liberalization is that domestic regulatory policies have become a focal point for efforts to reduce the costs of engaging in cross-border production and exchange. This article discusses the general challenges of reducing trade frictions created by regulatory...