To date, government procurement has been effectively carved out of the main multilateral rules of the WTO system. This paper examines the systemic and other ramifications of this exclusion, from both an economic and a legal point of view. In addition to relevant elements of the WTO Agreements,...

Emerging mega-integration blocs such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership are evolving outside of the World Trade Organization’s influence. Their most contested features are their investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) systems. This article...

To what extent do the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank remain central today and how much influence do they still wield in shaping the global agenda? While several studies have traced the development of various intergovernmental organizations (IGOs),...

Digital trade facilitation refers to the application of modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) to simplify and automate international trade procedures. It is rapidly becoming essential to maintaining trade competitiveness and enabling effective participation in cross-border...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between trade liberalisation and intra-regional trade in some selected ECOWAS member countries, with particular focus on the role of applied and most favoured nation import tariffs. Design/methodology/approach - Data utilized...

Trade in services is often hampered by domestic administrative barriers, even when countries are members of the same regional trade agreement. We exploit a large reform in the European Union (the EU Service Directive) targeted to reduce such administrative hurdles in cross-border service...

This paper presents new estimates of policy-induced trade costs in five services sectors for 46 countries. Results demonstrate the significant untapped economic potential of multilateral, plurilateral, and unilateral services trade liberalisation. Even though services trade has more than tripled...

We build a model of tacit collusion between firms that operate in multiple markets to study the effects of trade costs. A key feature of the model is that cartel discipline is endogenous. Thus, markets that appear segmented are strategically linked via the incentive compatibility constraint....

This paper investigates the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on trade flows in the case of the European countries. First, an ARDL dynamic panel model is estimated using the PMG method to analyse monthly data covering the most recent period (2019M1-2021M12); then, the GMM and PCSE approaches are...

The World Customs Organization (WCO, Organization Mondiale des Dounaes, OMD) is an intergovernmental organisation that was founded as European Customs Co- Operation Council in 1952 in Brussels/Belgium. It governs all Customs co-operation matters from tariff nomenclature, over universal Customs...