Extensive research has demonstrated the existence of large potential welfare gains from trade facilitation—measures to reduce the overall costs of the international movement of goods. From an equity perspective an important question is how those benefits are distributed across and within...

Extensive research has demonstrated the existence of large potential welfare gains from trade facilitation—measures to reduce the overall costs of the international movement of goods. From an equity perspective an important question is how those benefits are distributed across and within...

LDCs' trade patterns changed in the past decade, thanks to the rebalancing of global demand towards large emerging countries and the resulting cycle of high international commodity prices. This process led to a wider geographical diversification of LDCs' exports but contributed also to a greater...

Notwithstanding some progress in market and product diversification - including services - LDCs remain particularly vulnerable to external shocks. With the exception of 2006-2008, the LDCs as a group have systematically recorded a trade deficit. The 2008-2009 global crisis and the bumpy recovery...

The WTO’s new Agreement on Trade Facilitation (ATF) will help to reverse the region’s deceleration of overall export growth and, when implemented, could add as much as 3 percent to regional GDP and lift employment across the region by 1.2 percent. In the region’s developing economies,...

The global leather value chain is complex system. It includes animal husbandry, industrial and assembly processes and branded marketing, while semi-finished and finished products are sold and exported between companies and countries. One peculiarity of this value chain is its dependence on...

The global leather value chain is complex system. It includes animal husbandry, industrial and assembly processes and branded marketing, while semi-finished and finished products are sold and exported between companies and countries. One peculiarity of this value chain is its dependence on...

Annex D of the July 2004 Decision of the WTO General Council indicates that "the principle (of special and differential treatment for developing and least-developed countries) should extend beyond the granting of traditional transition periods for implementing commitments. In particular, the...

How do signatures required for exporting and business registration procedures affect the volume and composition of country's exports? To answer this question, I develop a model where a country can export two types of products: differentiated and homogeneous. I show that export signatures and...