The Belt Road Initiative (BRI) suggested by China’s President Xi Jinping provides an ambitious vision encouraging a new level of cooperation among countries along several economic corridors spanning most of the Asian economies member of ESCAP. This paper reviews the trade and trade...

Trade used to be about goods crossing borders and the instrument of protection was mostly through tariffs. Then there was greater recognition of trade in services, now exceeding the share of goods in global trade. Because of services, the focus of trade protection shifted more towards "behind...

Trade and investment can be effective means of implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. However, stand-alone trade and investment liberalization policies aimed at enhancing economic development may have negative side-effects on non-economic facets of sustainable development. As...

This study estimates the effect of trade facilitation measures implementation on trade costs in Asia and the Pacific using data from the United Nations Global Survey on Trade Facilitation and Paperless Trade Implementation. Impact of different sets of measures are considered, from a basic set of...

Trade's profound digital transformation has spurred a new era of digital trade. However, little is known about the impact of digital trade and related policies on sustainable development. To investigate this, our exploratory study employs Fixed-Effects (FE) regressions, linking digital trade...