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...

This paper assesses existing multilateral rules on government procurement from a developing country perspective. It summarizes the economics of discriminatory procurement and investigates to what extent data on procurement reported by members of the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA)...

This paper analyzes a prominent dimension of the initial policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic observed in many countries: the imposition of export restrictions and actions to facilitate imports. Using weekly data on the use of trade policy instruments during the first seven months of the...

The decision not to launch negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO) on three of the Singapore Issues in the so-called July 2004 package provides an opportunity to revisit the knowledge base on which proposals for further international collective action may be drawn. This paper examines...

Most governments have yet to agree to binding disciplines on government procurement regulation, whether in the WTO or a preferential trade agreement. Empirical research suggests that reciprocally-negotiated market access commitments have not been effective in inducing governments to buy more...

The effects on national welfare and market access of two important public procurement practices (discrimination and non-transparency) are analyzed with an eye to the ongoing discussions on procurement reform in the Doha Round. The analysis suggests that the welfare payoffs of adopting mechanisms...

This paper exploits a firm-level dataset for nineteen Sub-Sharan African countries that provides information on the share of total sales to government entities to provide new insights into the relative importance of participation in public procurement activity for different types of firms. We...

This paper investigates the relationship between the quality of regulatory policies governing public procurement and participation in public tenders by small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Using a large dataset on European procurement contracts, we find that countries with better quality...

Although average OECD tariffs on imports from the least developed countries are very low; tariffs above 15 percent (peaks) have a disproportional effect on their exports. Products subject to tariff peaks tend to be heavily concentrated in agriculture and food products and labor-intensive...