This paper provides an analytic discussion of China's complex foreign trade regime and suggests policy reforms. The paper pays special attention to the implementation of national trade policies at provincial and city levels. This is important for understanding developments in China's external...

One side of the debate about anti-dumping argues that dumping is not a problem in international trade - that it is a normal business practice which benefits the importing country's consumers and user industries - and that anti-dumping is inherently protectionist. The other side argues that an...

The authors estimate the impact of aggregate indicators of"soft"and"hard"infrastructure on the export performance of developing countries. They build four new indicators for 101 countries over the period 2004-07. Estimates show that trade facilitation reforms do improve the export performance of...

This paper reviews data and research on trade costs for Sub-Saharan African countries. It focuses on: border-related costs, transport costs, costs related to behind-the border issues, and the costs of compliance with rules of origin specific to preferential trade agreements. Trade costs are, on...

The authors compare the European Community's"trade fundamentals"prevailing in the 1960s with those applying in Arab countries today. The fundamentals differ significantly-Arab countries trade much less with each other than EC members did, and the importance of such trade in GDP varies greatly....

In the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union, trade among the new independent states collapsed. To help reestablish interstate trade, the 12 members of the Commonwealth of independent States (CIS) established a Free Trade Area. More recently, four members of the CIS -Belarus, Kazakstan,...

This paper develops a framework for analyzing the economic costs and benefits of unilateral and multilateral trade liberalization strategies. The interest in this topic is sparked by the apparent dilemma faced by some developing countries in the ongoing Uruguay Round of multilateral trade...

Developing countries sometimes still resist free trade because of the alleged protectionism of industrial countries -- a myth belied by facts, says the author. Import growth in the industrial countries accelerated during the 1980s, while income growth slowed. Outside of agriculture (only about 2...

The author reviews the static theory of regional integration arrangements, identifying and analyzing the impact of such arrangements on the trade and welfare of member countries, nonmember countries, and the world at large. He develops eight policy guidelines that apply mainly to small trading...

Subregional trade arrangements (RTAs) in Eastern and Southern Africa have proliferated in the past 10 to 15 years. The small size of most of the countries in the region, some of which are landlocked, and the security needs in the post independence period largely explain the rapid expansion....