Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to revisit the celebrated conflict that lasted close to two decades and pitted the EU against the USA and against MFN suppliers of bananas. It starts by recalling the major turning points in the dispute and argues that the EU-USA conflict could largely be...

A political economy model of protection is used to determine endogenously the intersectoral patterns of protection. Three propositions are derived that are consistent with the stylized patterns of tariff protection in rich and poor countries: Nominal protection rates escalate with the degree of...

The estimated coefficient of distance on the volume of trade is generally found to increase rather than decrease through time using the traditional gravity model of trade. This distance puzzle proved robust to several ad hoc versions of the model using data for 1962-96 for a large sample of 130...

The effective market access granted to textiles and apparel under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is estimated, taking into account the presence of rules of origin. First, estimates are provided of the effect of tariff preferences combined with rules of origin on the border...

International migration will be one of the major challenges of the twenty-first century. Lower transaction and communication costs have already greatly eased the formation of migrant networks and reduced migration costs, for long a deterrent to migration from developing countries to developed...

The least developed countries rely on preferential market access. To benefit from these preferences, proof of sufficient transformation must be provided to customs in importing countries by meeting the rules of origin requirements. These rules of origin are complicated and burdensome to...

With preferential trade agreements on the rise worldwide rules of origin—which are necessary to prevent trade deflection—are attracting increasing attention. At the same time, preference erosion for Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) recipients is increasing resistance to further...