Over the past three decades, free trade agreements were mostly a European phenomenon European Free Trade Agreement [EFTA], European Economic Community [EEC], and their regional arrangements). Recently, this phenomenon has reached the Americas and is growing. The authors show that free trade...

Many developing countries are being encouraged to shift toward increased processing and exports of domestically produced natural resource based products now exported in primary form. But in many major markets, the structure of tariffs and nontariff barriers militate against such efforts. Zero or...

Several studies have quantified the influence of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the earlier Canada - United States Free Trade Agreement on member countries. Less attention has been paid to their effects on nonmembers. The authors try to quantify NAFTA's third-party effects...

The authors give a long-term perspective on how changes in the former CMEA areas will affect international trade in manufactures. They show that expanding Eastern European exports to the West should be viewed as a step toward normalizing the Eastern European countries'trade patterns. First,...

Economists often argue that the level and structure of a country's trade barriers and the quality of its governance policies (for example, regulating foreign investment or limiting commercial activity with red tape) have a major influence on its economic growth and performance. One problem...

In the mid-1950s sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 3.1 percent of global exports. By 1990 this share had fallen to 1.2 percent. The authors of this report find that Africa's extensive loss of competitiveness played a key role in its decline in world trade. If Africa had merely retained its...

World Bank demographic and country characteristic statistics identify 16 small landlocked countries that are similar to Lesotho. The authors attempt to determine what useful policy information can be derived from the recent trade performance of these"comparators."Among questions they pose are...

Exports in the Middle Eastern countries should increase from $800 million to $900 million as a result of the tariff cuts agreed on in the Uruguay Round, according to the author.This represents an annual expansion of less than 1 percent. Projected gains are small because the erosion of tariff...

A concern about regional trade arrangements (RTAs) is whether the discriminatory trade barriers applied to RTAs encourage high-cost imports from member countries at the expense of nonmember lower-cost goods. RTA impact evaluations have been hampered by a lack of appropriate empirical procedures...

Perhaps the major accomplishment of the Uruguay Round is agreements reached on nontariff barriers (NTBs). All NTBs imposed under the Multifiber Arrangement (MFA) will be phased out over 10 years, and all"voluntary"export restraints will be abolished. OECD countries'NTBs on agricultural goods...