Quantifying the welfare effects of trade liberalization is a core issue in international trade. Existing frameworks assume perfect labor markets and therefore ignore the effects of aggregate employment changes for welfare. We develop a quantitative trade framework which explicitly models labor...

his paper attempts to perform an empirical analysis of the effects of “labor clauses” provided in bilateral or plurilateral trade agreements (or regional trade agreements: RTAs) on working conditions that laborers in the RTA signatory countries actually face, using macro-level data for a...

The article summarises the main lessons of the Bank’s 2010 conference which focused on international trade and foreign direct investment. The research is based on a microeconomic approach to the behaviour of Belgian firms, with reference to developments in the scientific literature on the...

An increasing number of regional trade agreements (RTAs) include “labor clauses” that require or urge the signatory countries to commit to maintaining a certain level of labor standards. This paper, starting by classifying more than 200 currently effective RTAs depending on the nature and...

The declared objective of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) is to promote free trade between member states. Nonetheless, an exhaustive study of bilateral merchandise trade based on a large panel data set led Rose (2004) to conclude that...

Rose (2004) showed that the WTO or its predecessor, the GATT, did not promote trade, based on conventional econometric analysis of gravity-type equations of trade. We argue that conclusions regarding the GATT/WTO trade effect based on gravity-type equations are arbitrary and subject to...

A recent phenomenon is the rapid spread of Antidumping (AD) laws mainly amongst developing countries ‘i.e. China, India, Mexico). Between 1980 and 2003 the number of countries in the world with an AD law more than doubled going from 36 to 97 countries. This proliferation of trade protection...

Rose (2004) showed that the WTO or its predecessor, the GATT, did not promote trade, based on conventional econometric analysis of gravity-type equations of trade. We argue that conclusions regarding the GATT/WTO trade effect based on gravity-type equations are arbitrary and subject to...

A recent phenomenon is the rapid spread of Antidumping (AD) laws mainly amongst developing countries (i.e. China, India, Mexico). Between 1980 and 2003 the number of countries in the world with an AD law more than doubled going from 36 to 97 countries. This proliferation of trade protection laws...

This paper proposes to reexamine the trade effect of GATT/WTO based on non-parametric econometric techniques. Our estimation framework uses the simplest gravity model that explains bilateral trade volumes with country sizes and trade resistance, without imposing parametric assumptions typically...