The objective of the paper is to explore and give an overview of two central policy alternatives to improve the integration between the European Union and developing countries by removing barriers to trade: trade preferences and trade facilitation. After reviewing the relevant literatures and...

The Asian countries are once again focused on options for large, comprehensive regional integration schemes. In this paper we explore the implications of such broad-based regional trade initiatives in Asia, highlighting the bridging of the East and South Asian economies. We place emphasis on the...

Evaluating the economic impact of an FTA is an important part of the monitoring and surveying process that should follow the establishment of an FTA. This paper presents methods for evaluating the trade and welfare effects of an FTA. These methods show how to (i) compute indicators for the...

This paper provides practical techniques to policymakers for evaluating the potential economic effects of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). To this end, the paper discusses how to apply three methods: (i) trade indicators, (ii) SMART (Software for Market Analysis and Restrictions on Trade) in WITS...

This paper explores the relationship between preferential and multilateral trade liberalization at the sectoral level using a unique dataset that includes data on most favored nation (MFN) and bilateral preferential tariffs at the 4-digit ISIC level for 11 Latin American countries over the...

Despite the fact that many modern preferential trade agreements include commitments to foreign investors in imperfectly competitive services sectors, the literature has not established conditions under which these agreements are beneficial or harmful. The authors fill that void by developing a...

This article provides a review of literature on African Agency and the drivers of change within EU–African trade politics in negotiations on Economic Partnership Agreements between the European Union and African governments.

Previous studies on the impacts of free trade agreements (FTAs) in East Asia have assumed full utilization of preferences. The evidence suggests that this assumption is seriously in error, with the estimated uptake particularly low in East Asia. In this paper, we assume a more realistic...

Regional economic integration is back in vogue following the "stumble" in the Doha Round in July 2008. Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) are driving this trend in Asia and the Pacific as well as in Central and South America, and the sheer volume of PTAs is striking. In the 1990s there were...