This paper investigates empirically whether the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement had a building bloc or stumbling bloc effect on subsequent changes in MFN tariffs of four major ASEAN members. The method resembles the one recently used by Nuno Limão. We use tariff data to test whether MFN tariffs were...

Traditionally the IMF's Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions has been the main source of information about the exchange-rate policies pursued by member countries. The classification contained therein has been used to document the evolution of exchange rate regimes...

Economists have recently begun trying to explain that pattern of Regional Trade Agreement (RTA) formation around the world. This paper adds to the developing literature by taking into account the fact that many of the RTAs signed are not effectively implemented. The analysis proceeds in two...

Knowledge spillovers and technical externalities play a fundamental role in basically all endogenous growth models. In a context of increasing returns to scale and transportation costs it seems reasonable to assume that regional agglomeration of production and R&D activities is linked to...

This paper analyses the impact of preference erosion on Bangladesh’s clothing industry coming from both the ATC quotas phasing-out and the reduction on MFN tariffs under NAMA negotiations. First, it undertakes a numerical exercise to estimate the effects of tariffs reduction in the US and the...

This paper considers tax competition and tax harmonization in the presence of agglomeration forces and falling trade costs. With agglomerative forces operating, industry is not indifferent to location in equilibrium, so perfectly mobile capital becomes a quasi-fixed factor. This suggests that...

The paper explains why institutions matter for a deep integration process, as illustrated by the liberalization of Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs) in Europe. We argue that deep trade liberalization requires supranational institutions of deeper integration that permit enforcement, surveillance, and...

Despite world-wide bloc economies after the Depression, Japan had a tight relationship with the British Commonwealth and created tight connections with the Sterling and the Gold blocs in the late 1930s. The world-wide bloc economies did not isolate Japan.

International Trade and Agglomeration: An Alternative Framework.

We study the incidence of offshoring, or trade in tasks, on firms' productivity and on manufacturing employment in a standard economic-geography model with iceberg trade costs and a continuum of tasks. In a two-countries world where one country has a Hick's neutral technological edge over the...