Rich countries use a combination of domestic market interventions and border protection or export subsidies as a part of their domestic policies. Developed countries such as the United States and the European Union (EU) resort to trade distorting policies to make their crop more competitive both...

We review a recent body of theoretical work that aims to put numbers on the consequences of globalization. A unifying theme of our survey is methodological. We rely on gravity models and demonstrate how they can be used for counterfactual analysis. We highlight how various economic...

The global economic crisis has forced a major rethinking of the respective roles of governments and markets in the processes of trade and growth. Indeed, industrial policy seems to be back in fashion—or, at least, talking about it is. But a renewed “activism” by government in the trade and...

This survey concludes that including agriculture in the negotiations was particularly important economically. Although agricultural exports are less than 10% of merchandise trade, the high and variable protection in this sector appears to account for the majority of the cost of distortions in...

This paper presents descriptive evidence of specialisation trends and investigates empirically their causes and consequences, analysing the role of policies in this process. Then, based on the insights from the backward looking analysis, it draws global trade and specialisation scenarios up to...

This paper addresses the issue of export licensing procedures in the WTO context. It aims to contribute to the understanding of the existing rules applicable to export licensing in the WTO, and what the development of specific disciplines would mean to international trade. The paper looks at the...

This paper examines whether, in the presence of trade preferences, Sub-Saharan African economies, and especially its poorest households, could gain from multilateral trade reform. The World Bank’s LINKAGE model of the global economy is employed to examine the impact first of current trade...

This paper examines the potential benefits and costs of providing duty-free, quota-free market access to the least developed countries (LDCs), and the effects of extending eligibility to other small and poor countries. Using the MIRAGE computable general equilibrium model, it assesses the impact...

Since the recovery from the great financial crisis in 2010, global real trade flows grew much slower than pre-crisis, in both absolute terms (growth rates) and relative terms (relative to GDP, from 2:1 in the great 1990’s to 1:1 since 2012) A debate has arisen as to whether this global trade...

The agreement recently signed between Morocco and the United States foresees several modalities in dismantling tariffs. Our simulations show that the various modalities of trade liberalization may have different impacts on the welfare, the rate of growth and the sectoral trade balance of these...