Preferential market access, either in the recent OECD initiatives or in the North-South FTAs, requires the use of rules of origin (RoO). Recent studies have questioned the extent of market access provided by these preferences. Using data on Mexican exports to the US in 2001, this Paper estimates...

Building on earlier work by Estevadeordal, we construct a synthetic index (R-index) intending to capture the restrictiveness on market access due to product specific rules of origin (PSRO) that apply at the tariff-line level. The R-index is constructed for rules of origins under NAFTA and under...

This paper estimates the effective market access granted under NAFTA in textiles and apparel by combining two approaches. First, we estimate the effect of tariff preferences and rules of origin on the border prices of Mexican final goods exported to the US and of US intermediates exported to...

This paper reports panel gravity estimates of aggregate bilateral trade for 130 countries over the period 1962-96 in which the coefficient of distance is allowed to change over time. In a standard specification, in which transport costs are proxied only, it is found paradoxically that the...

The paper develops two synthetic measures at the HS-10 level to depict effective market access for a country receiving preferential access and applies these to the market access ASEAN members would receive on impact following the implementation of an FTA with the EU. These measures reveal quite...

LDCs hoped that the DOHA round would bring them greater market access in OECD countries than for non-LDCs. Using HS-6 tariff level data for the US and the EU for 2004, this paper estimates that, once the erosion from preferential access into the EU to non-LDCs is taken into account, LDCs have...

The "distance effect" measuring the elasticity of trade flows to distance has been found to be rising since the early 1970s in a host of studies based on the gravity model, leading observers to call it the "distance puzzle". However, this puzzle is regularly challenged by new developments in the...