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...

The countries of the Middle Eastand North Africa (MENA) have lost the geographic advantage they used to have because of their proximity to the European Union at a time when Eastern Europe was effectively closed to open exchange with the West. The Central and Eastern European countries are...

For over three decades, Sub-Saharan African countries have had an interest in regional integration initiatives to accelerate their industrialization and growth. With the help of a more comprehensive database on intra-African trade than was previously available, the author examines a proposal to...

The authors provide a new approach to the evaluation of pre-shipment inspection (PSI) programs as ways of improving tariff-revenue collection and reducing fraud when customs administrations are corrupt. They build a model highlighting the contribution of surveillance firms to the generation of...

The authors examine the impact of trade facilitation on bilateral trade flows. They examine trade facilitation and capacity-building priorities in 12 countries in the Europe and Central Asia region-eight of the current members of the European Union: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia,...

The Pacific Rim members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group have different views about the role each should play in fostering further trade liberalization. But at the November 1994 APEC meetings in Bogor they committed themselves to forming an APEC free trade area. The authors...

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....

The authors empirically assess regional integration and liberalization scenarios impact on Indonesia and other Pacific Rim economies, including the complete Uruguay Round, further global liberalization and the creation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) or Asia-Pacific...

The authors apply a gravity model to data on annual non-fuel imports for 58 countries for the years 1980-96, to quantify the effects on trade of recently created or revamped preferential trade agreements (PTAs). They modify the usual gravity equation to identify the separate effects of PTAs on...

The author uses detailed trade, tariff, and income data for countries involved in 91 trade agreements negotiated since 1980 to test for reciprocity in free trade agreements. The results offer strong evidence of reciprocity in North-North and South-South free trade agreements, but there is little...