The post Second World War liberal trade order has been a driver of global economic growth and rising average per capita incomes. This order confronts increasing opposition, reflecting concerns about adjustment costs and distributional effects of globalization, and the ability to pursue national...

There is a good deal of intra-industry trade between nations in Central and Eastern Europe and the European Union. Most of it is vertical (the exchange of similar goods of different quality). Eastern European nations and the European Union (EU) is among the highest of all the EU's bilateral...

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a mechanism through which countries can upgrade connectivity-related infrastructure, including through cross-border projects, complementing traditional sources of finance. An overarching goal of the BRI is to reduce trade costs between China and partner...

Although the WTO has fulfilled several key tasks it was set up to do – providing periodic reviews of members’ trade policies, resolving disputes, supporting negotiations – with the notable exceptions of the Trade Facilitation and Information Technology agreements, WTO members have not been...

Hoekman and Javorcik focus on policies facilitating firm adjustment to globalization. They briefly review the effects of trade and investment liberalization on firms, focusing on within-industry effects. They postulate that governments' role in supporting the process is to (1) ensure that firms...

International law, political science and economics scholars are all concerned with analyzing the performance of the WTO as an organization. In this paper we focus on the objectives that these different disciplines attribute to the WTO and how performance is assessed against these objectives. The...

This Paper focuses on policies facilitating firm adjustment to globalization. We briefly review the effects of trade and investment liberalization on firms, focusing on within- industry effects. We postulate that governments’ role in supporting the process is to: (i) ensure that firms face...

Governments increasingly are seeking to use bilateral and regional trade agreements to reduce the cost-increasing effects of differences in product market regulation. They also pursue regulatory cooperation independent of trade agreements. It is important to understand what is being done through...

Geo-economic tensions and global collective action problems call for international cooperation to revise and develop rules to guide both the use of domestic subsidies and responses by governments to cross-border competition spillover effects. Current WTO rules that divide all subsidies into...

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...