Following the onset of the financial crisis in September 2008 and the subsequent “Great Trade Collapse” (Baldwin 2009), many countries actively used trade policy instruments as part of their response to the global recession. Governments pursued a mix of trade liberalization, trade promotion,...

Recovering revenue loss due to the reduction in import tariffs is a major concern of many developing economies. In an economy with free entry, which affects the product market competition, we show that, even if there is no other tax reform such as a profit tax reform, the market mechanism itself...

In this study we test for structural changes in international trade patterns of 77 countries over the post-WWII period, to examine if they experienced a substantial increase in their trade ratios following major GATT rounds such as the Kennedy Round, or after joining GATT. Our results show that...

Trade and investment in services is inhibited by a range of policy restrictions, but the best offers so far in the Doha negotiations are on average twice as restrictive as actual policy. They will generate no additional market opening. Regulatory concerns help explain the limited progress. We...

Conventional economic theory advocates trade liberalization, and ultimately free trade because its benefits are said to outweigh its costs. This paper states the arguments for and against the liberalization of trade and then analyzes the case of Pakistan's trade liberalization. Some...

Reviewing the experience of developing countries in recent years as well as successful industrialization in developed countries in previous centuries, the author explains that trade liberalization is necessary for industrialization if: it is regarded as a part and parcel of a dynamic and...

Recent cross-country research shows that there is a causal relationship between trade liberalization and quality of institutions. The literature on cross-country studies has been criticized because differences in legal systems and other institutions across countries are difficult to control for....

The contribution of this paper is to derive an optimal redistribution scheme for trade gains in the case of a government's objective function that explicitly accounts for the equity-efficiency trade-off. The government pays unemployment benefits (UB) either financed by a wage tax, a payroll tax...

Trade liberalization is no Pareto-improvement - there are winners (high-skilled) and losers (low-skilled). To compensate the losers the government is assumed to introduce unemployment benefits (UB). These benefits are financed by either a wage tax, a payroll tax, or a profit tax. Using a...

This paper focuses on the appropriate measurement of intra-industry trade as indicator of structural adjustment costs. Vertical intra-industry trade is distinguished from horizontal trade on the basis of industrial organisation rather than quality differences. It is argued that existing dynamic...