Recent research suggests that trade costs influence the pattern of specialization and trade, but there is limited empirical research on the determinants of trade costs. The existing literature identifies a range of barriers that separate nations, but then typically focuses only on transport...

Emphasizing the importance of evaluating the Uruguay Round in the context of a changing world economy, the authors base their projections on a model that incorporates certain economic shifts: 1) that the center of economic gravity will shift toward the South and toward Asia (a shift that is...

Starting in the late 1980s, policy makers and academics began increasingly to call for the development of multilateral discipline on anticompetitive practices. Some believe that falling trade barriers must be complemented by antitrust measures to ensure that foreign competition materializes;...

The authors discuss options that could be considered in the World Trade Organization (WTO) to provide more favorable treatment-so-called special and differential treatment (SDT)-to small and low-income countries. They argue that there is a need both for differentiation across WTO members and for...

China's World Trade Organization (WTO) accession will have major implications for China and present both opportunities and challenges for East Asia. Ianchovichina and Walmsley assess the possible channels through which China's accession to the WTO could affect East Asia and quantify these...

The primary distinction in a North-South trade accord is likely to be that the Southern nation experiences more capital scarcity than its Northern trade partner. So the trade accord's impact on the Southern trading partner's ability to attract capital may have welfare implications for both...

The authors analyze the unparalleled increase in foreign direct investment to emerging market economies in the past 25 years. Using a large cross-country time-series data set, the authors evaluate the dependence of foreign direct investment on global factors or worldwide sources of risk (that...

The author examines whether trade liberalization should create a greater incentive for countries to invest in transportation infrastructure. He pays special attention to the case of preferential trade liberalization between neighboring countries, where investments in roads or railroads are...

The new round of negotiations has begun with a mechanical sense of"since we said we would, therefore we must,"says the author. To make the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) more effective ay liberalization, the author suggests improving the agreement's rules, countries'specific...

Much foreign direct investment is between high-income countries, but investment in some developing and transition regions, while still modest, grew rapidly in the 1990s. Adjusting for market size, much investment stays close to home; adjusting for distance, much heads toward the countries with...