Most countries are members of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). The effect of these agreements has attracted much interest and raised the question of whether PTAs promote or slow down multilateral trade liberalization, i.e. whether they are a ‘building block’ or a ‘stumbling block’...

This Paper is concerned with the interaction of regulated efficiency and World Trade Organization (WTO) accession and its impact on China’s motor vehicle sector. The analysis is conducted using a 23-sector/25-region computable general equilibrium model. Regulatory reform and internal...

This paper uses a schematic computable model of the iron and steel sectors in the European Community (EC) and Eastern Europe to explore the effects of trade policies on those sectors. In particular it explores the partial opening of EC markets to Eastern producers. Following a discussion of...

Does trade policy influence schooling and child labor decisions in low income countries? We examine this question in the context of India's 1991 tariff reforms. Overall, in the 1990s, rural India experienced a dramatic increase in schooling and decline in child labor. These trends were...

The role of the state is traditionally considered to have been critical in assiting rapid trade union membership growth in Australia in the early 1990s and in the USA from 1935 to 1945, through the introduciton of the compulsory state arbitration system in Australia and the enforcement...

The main facts of the Uruguayan labour market along the nineties may be summarized in three main phenomena: increase in wage inequality with an increase of the skill wage premium and changes in the inter-industrial wage structure; destruction of unskilled jobs, associated to trade openness and...

The goal of our research is to study Ukraine's accession to the WTO referring to one particular sector discussed most hotly in this context: metallurgy. Ukrainian metallurgy has two remarkable features: from one side, steel producers receive substantial subsidies; from the other side, Ukrainian...

This paper provides a quantitative study of the economic effects of a stylised simulation of trade liberalisation for Ireland using the GTAP model. The experiment incorporates the liberalisation of agricultural, manufacturing and services trade as well as measures to improve trade facilitation....

Import liberalization forms part and parcel of trade reforms in transition economies. There are, however, significant differences among post-communist countries in the degree of import liberalization. What factors govern the evolution of import tariff policy during the transition period? This...

When designing a trade policy reform, government of a transition country faces the problem of minimizing both trade distortions and losses in tariff revenues. One possible solution of this problem is tariff unification, which undermines stimuli for tariff evasion and thus saves budget revenues....