In the first half of the 1990s many Central and East European countries (CEECs) experienced very high growth rates of exports to OECD nations. This paper investigates the contribution of sources of comparative advantage and economic restructuring on the pattern, composition and volume of trade....

The stalemate reached on launching negotiations on most of the Singapore Issues at Cancún provides an opportunity to revisit the knowledge base upon which proposals for international collective action may be drawn. This Paper examines the available evidence on public procurement practices in...

This paper discusses the potential role of a Euro-Mediterranean Agreement (EMA) in helping Middle East and North African governments implement structural economic reforms. The arguments for and against preferential liberalization are summarized, identifying a number of necessary conditions for...

International agreements increasingly constrain the ability of governments to use trade policies whereas few constraints apply to the use of investment policies. Using a model in which a local and a foreign firm compete in the domestic market, we analyse whether the foreign firm may be forced to...

Because of concern that OECD tariff reductions will translate into worsening export performance for the least developed countries, trade preferences have proven a stumbling block to developing country support for multilateral liberalization. We examine the actual scope for preference erosion,...

International cooperation is generally driven by a desire to offset a negative spillover imposed by other countries or to help governments to overcome domestic political economy constraints that impede the adoption of welfare enhancing policy changes. In principle, both conditions are satisfied...

A basic tenet of economic reform efforts in much of the Middle East and North Africa region has been gradualism. Partial and slow reform has led to a lack of credibility, limiting private sector supply response. The creation of the World Trade Organization, and the offer from the EU to establish...

This paper first briefly describes the role of the WTO and its history. It then lays out a simple bargaining model of international negotiations, which can be used for understanding the Doha round of talks. This simple framework is used to distil and discuss a number of potential explanations...

Although average tariffs in Quad markets are very low, tariff peaks and tariff escalation have a disproportional effect on exports from least developed countries (LDCs). Tariff peak products tend to be heavily concentrated in agriculture and food products and in labour-intensive sectors such as...

This paper explores the possibility of governments seeking to agree to apply competition policy-based considerations and disciplines in the context of unfair trade allegations before turning to `standard' antidumping remedies. The premise of proponents of antidumping action is that the existence...