A revenue-neutral switch from trade taxes to domestic consumption taxes is fraught with implementation challenges in countries with a large informal sector. It is shown for a sample of low-income countries over 25 years that they have had a mixed record of offsetting reductions in trade tax...

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...

The scope and complexity of international trading arrangements in the Middle East, as well as their spotty historical record of success, underscores the urgent need for an adequate understanding of the relative costs and benefits of participation in preferential trading arrangements and, more...

Through its diverse trade preference schemes, the European Union provides different groups of developing countries with different degrees of market access. This paper is the first to demonstrate empirically that such staggered market access induces sizable trade diversion to the detriment of...

Many trade negotiations involve large cuts in high tariffs, with flexibilities allowing much smaller cuts for an agreed number of politically-sensitive products. The effects of these flexibilities on market access opportunities are difficult to predict, creating particular problems for...

The outlines of a potential agreement, emerging after seven years of negotiations, imply that Doha offers three key benefits: reduced uncertainty of market access in goods and services; improved market access in agriculture and manufacturing; and the mobilization of resources to deal with the...

TRIST is a simple, easy to use tool to assess the adjustment implications of trade reform. It improves on existing tools. First, it is an improvement in terms of accuracy because projections are based on revenues actually collected at the tariff line level rather than simply applying statutory...

Traditional weighted-average measures of trade distortions are widely used in analyzing global and regional reforms, despite well-known deficiencies. This paper develops and applies optimal aggregators for the real-world case of multiple countries and commodities with much more detailed...

This paper uses detailed data on bound and applied tariffs to assess the consequences of the World Trade Organization’s December 2008 Modalities for tariffs levied and faced by developing countries, and the welfare implications of these reforms. The authors find that the tiered formula for...

After 18 years of negotiations, Russia has joined the World Trade Organization. This paper assesses how the tariff structure of the Russian Federation will change as a result of the phased implementation of its World Trade Organization commitments between 2012 and 2020 and how it has changed as...