This article aims to analyze how the financial crisis that bursted in the mid-2008 led to a global and regional drop in trade flows. It starts from a comparison of the Great Depression shock to what happened during the Great Recession. Based on the similarities and differences found in the...

Although textile and apparel imports from most countries entered the United States quota-free after the expiration of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing on January 1, 2005, substantial restraints remain on U.S. trade in these sectors, including high tariffs, quantitative restraints on China...

The decision of the United Kingdom (UK) to leave the European Union (EU) is unprecedented, especially considering the recent trend in the global economy toward economic integration. There is a multitude of research concerning the implications of economic integration; however, research in the...

International trade in manufacturing goods has risen strongly over the past decades, contributing to the expansion of global value chains (GVCs). This paper studies how two factors contributed to this rise since 1970: (i) declining "border effects" that are arguably related to the ICT revolution...

This paper studies the role of reduced barriers to international trade from two dimensions: (i) the implementation of Free Trade Agreements and (ii) declining "border effects". Our empirical estimates suggest that diminished border effects accounts for the bulk of the increase in international...

The article summarises the main lessons of the Bank’s 2010 conference which focused on international trade and foreign direct investment. The research is based on a microeconomic approach to the behaviour of Belgian firms, with reference to developments in the scientific literature on the...

With a growing integration via trade and investment, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that have traditionally been oriented towards domestic markets increasingly compete with private firms in the global market place. Three principal questions emerge from the international trade perspective: (1)...

Lex mercatoria or Law Merchant (‘LM’) is said to be the self-made law of international commerce. According to its proponents, LM is an autonomous legal order that not only supplements state commercial law, but works as a substitute for it. The ‘ancient’ LM, which accompanied the...

International trade in manufacturing goods has risen strongly over the past decades, contributing to the expansion of global value chains (GVCs). This paper studies how two factors contributed to this rise since 1970: (i) declining "border effects" that are arguably related to the ICT revolution...

This paper studies the role of reduced barriers to international trade from two dimensions: (i) the implementation of Free Trade Agreements and (ii) declining "border effects". Our empirical estimates suggest that diminished border effects accounts for the bulk of the increase in international...