A pivotal factor to improving the economies of developing countries is to eliminate trade barriers and increase market access. This paper examines efforts at liberalizing trade in developing countries. It explains the various multilateral trade agreements and negotiations and analyses their...

In the last ten years, there has been a sea change in trade and related policies in emerging markets. This results from autonomous reforms undertaken in conjunction with macro-economic stabilization programmes. Many non-tariff measures have been eliminated and tariffs, now the principal trade...

Whether international economic integration arrangements result in more liberal trade at the multilateral level cannot be proven with ease. Integration may start this process, but it may also reverse it. New mega-integration deals: the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Regional Comprehensive Economic...

This draft chapter examines the embedded liberalism compromise in the context of the GATT and Uruguay Round agreements. It also briefly addresses possible examples of embedded liberalism in the current international economic law environment. The term “embedded liberalism” was coined by John...

More than 170 years ago, Frédéric Bastiat noted in his masterly work Economic Sophisms that the “opposition to free trade rests upon errors, or, if you prefer, upon half-truths.”1 Ever since Adam Smith successfully replaced mercantilist orthodoxy with free trade doctrine in his celebrated...

In the last ten years, there has been a sea change in trade and related policies in emerging markets. This results from autonomous reforms undertaken in conjunction with macroeconomic stabilization programmes. Many non-tariff measures have been eliminated and tariffs, now the principal trade...

Trade has been a means to development by generating jobs, spurring economic growth, and reducing poverty. However, the gains from trade have shown to be less than equally distributed, hurting at times some localities and segments of countries’ populations. The COVID-19 pandemic has also shown...

In examining the effect of membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the amounts of Aid for Trade (AfT) that accrue to developing countries, Lee et al. (2015) (The World Economy, 38, 2015 and 1462) have found that developing country members of the World Trade Organization (WTO)...

Digital technology has penetrated various fields, including international trade. This study aims to analyze how barriers/openness to trade in digital services affected exports before the COVID-19 pandemic (2015-2016) and during the pandemic (2019-2020). Based on the Gravity model, exports seem...