Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in the Asia-Pacific region have proliferated rapidly over the past five years and … are creating a complex web of intersecting bilateral and regional trade agreements. This paper describes the proliferation …

Current U.S. trade policy stresses establishing free trade areas (FTAs) with partners spanning the globe. Motivations … include enhancing goods and services trade; stimulating investment flows; extending standards on intellectual property rights … importance of trade complementarity, trade diversion, and welfare losses for nonmembers. Agriculture and textiles play a central …

To date, government procurement has been effectively carved out of the main multilateral rules of the WTO system. This … addition to relevant elements of the WTO Agreements, particularly the Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) and the General … Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), it derives insights from a large number of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) that embody …

In her paper, Sylvia Ostry argues that if China had joined the GATT, the negotiations would have been far easier since … accession will not help to break the North-South gridlock that has tied up the WTO. Ostry proposes that China’s entry into the … liberalization commitments and was subject to review by the WTO’s Trade Policy Review Committee. In her view, the same mechanism …

Is the recent proliferation of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) in Asia a healthy development, or runs the risk of … results show that membership in the Asian RTAs considered in this study have not, to date, occurred at the expense of trade … and multilateral liberalization, could run the risk of leading to costly trade diversion. …

Regional trade arrangements (RTAs) in Africa have been ineffective in promoting trade and foreign direct investment …. Relatively high external trade barriers and low resource complementarity between member countries limit both intra- and … extraregional trade. Small market size, poor transport facilities and high trading costs make it difficult for African countries to …

South-South trade agreements are proliferating: Developing countries signed 70 new agreements between 1990 and 2003 …-South preferential trade agreements stemming from changes in trade patterns. Specifically, it estimates the impact of the Common Market … has not considerably increased Uganda's trade with member countries, on average across sectors. The effect, however, is …

, economic recovery, and positive economic growth in the midst of a world financial and economic crisis. …

effect of the agreement in spurring a dramatic increase in trade and financial flows between Mexico and its NAFTA partners … regional free trade arrangements should be used to accelerate, rather than postpone, needed structural reform. …

suggest that protectionist pressures may rise. Gaps in World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments leave ample scope to further … restrictions is modest, at about 0.25 percent of global trade, as most countries have resisted a widespread resort to protectionism … restrict trade, so unless all countries vigorously resist protectionism this could threaten the economic recovery and drag down …