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...

Using a tax model of an open economy, the authors provide a simple but rigorous method for estimating the fiscal impact of trade reform. Both the direction and the magnitude of the fiscal consequences of trade reform depend on the elasticities of substitution and transformation between foreign...

Since the breakup of the USSR, the South Caucasus region has experienced a range of political conflicts, resulting in a number of hot and cold wars and border closures. The author analyzes the probably short-term impacts of peace in the region as a result of a resolution of the conflict between...

The United States imports around 25 percent of its merchandise under some form of preferential trade regime. The authors examine both the origins and consequences of U.S. trade preferences in the context of the gravity model of international trade. First, they provide estimates of the impact of...

The author explores whether a systematic relationship exists between a developing country's participation in a preferential regional trade agreement (RTA) and the restrictiveness of its trade regime. The motivation for her study is provided by the current debate about whether regional trading...

The author studies the case for three different approaches to regionalism in East Asia. First, he examines closely the only serious attempt at preferential trading in the region - the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has recently announced plans to form the ASEAN Free Trade...

In 1986 Vietnam initiated a transition from a centrally planned economy to a market-oriented economy where the government would keep playing a leading role. These renovation (doi moi) policies were successful at generating economic growth and reducing poverty. In the ten-year socioeconomic...

The author presents the first documented estimates of how moving to international trade prices effects the terms of trade in 15 countries of the former Soviet Union. First, he decomposes the total impact of a change in the inter-republic and extra-republic terms of trade. The broad pattern, he...

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....