This paper addresses the regulatory and policy environments conducive for e-commerce to thrive. In particular, as regulatory issues affecting e-commerce have become more prominent in recent regional trade agreements (RTAs), the paper seeks to investigate their role in setting the regulatory...

This paper proposes a unique overview of trade policies trends since the launch of the Doha Round, based on detailed data on tariffs and trade covering 130 countries. We show that regionalism has delivered limited effective liberalization so far, leading to only a 0.3 percentage point (p.p.) cut...

What determines the choice of countries' trade partners? We show theoretically and empirically that financial market imperfections affect the number and identity of exporters' destinations. Bigger economies with lower trade costs are more attractive markets because they offer higher export...

COVID-19 has raised questions about the resilience of agri-food trade to global shocks to the system. This paper analyses the changes in agri-food trade (values, extensive and intensive margin, and diversification) during the pandemic at global and regional levels. It also considers parallels in...

This paper extends the model developed by Krugman and Taylor (1978) to take into account interesting features of the evolving structure of global trade. The growing presence of transnational production chains and differential pricing behaviour of exports destined for industrial and developing...

Devaluation is an integral part of adjustment in many developing countries, particularly relied upon by countries facing large external imbalances. A devaluation can only reduce trade imbalances if it translates to a real devaluation and if trade flows respond to relative prices in a significant...

I document that cross-country productivity differences in retail trade, which employs around 20% of workers, are accounted for, in large part, by compositional differences. In richer countries most retailing is done in modern stores, with high measured output per worker, whereas in developing...