The “Doha Round” may be finished in 2011, more than ten years after having been officially launched.2 A detailed description of the negotiations over such a long period goes far beyond the scope of a chapter, and would require a book.3 Rather, this chapter focuses on the four key questions...

This dissertation examines the links between international trade and economic development through the lens of export growth at the extensive margin. By extensive margin growth is meant either trade in previously untraded products, or trade in existing products between new country pairs. The...

The EU severe debt problem requires urgently the design and implementation of domestic pro-growth reform agendas in Europe. Opening markets to foreign competitors has always been a way to boost and buttress such agendas. A “Sleeping Doha” Round leaves preferential trade agreements (PTAs) as...

It is widely recognized that forecasting future climate shocks at a regional level̶which regions will be flooded, which ones will be under water stress on a year by year basis̶is largely out of reach. In such circumstances, trade gets back a role that has faded away during the last sixty years...

As requested by the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, this note focuses on Articles 14 and 15 of the proposed Directive on services. These two provisions are crucial: they define the “screening” process and the timetable which will make operational the “country of...

L’article commence par estimer le niveau et les coûts de la protection en Europe. Le niveau moyen de protection (droits de douane et principales barrières non-tarifaires) est de 12 % environ (contre 14 % jusqu’en 1997) avec des pics élevés pour les produits agricoles et certains biens...

The European Community (the correct legal term in trade matters, hereafter EC) is still a recent and ongoing process. Fifty years is a short time span for such an endeavour (Annex I lists the 17 Treaties that have formed its legal basis).3 It is strictly an economic process because a straight...

Services providers are busy re-designing their strategies to cope with the global economic crisis. In order to take the right decisions, they need clarity and predictability on future market access in services. Meanwhile, consumers impoverished by the current crisis would greatly benefit from...

As most of the high tariffs protect agricultural products, consumers tend to back off because they often support small farmers. But the term “agriculture” is a misnomer. The Doha negotiators deal with processed food roughly three times more often than with farm products per se. Moreover, the...

One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and three years after the start of the food and commodities crisis, time seems ripe to make a provisional assessment of the resilience of the open trade policies to this severe downturn, and to draw the main lessons. In attempting to answer this...