May 1999 - Preferential trade agreements that are limited to the elimination of tariffs for merchandise trade flows are of limited value at best and may be as easily welfare-reducing as welfare-enhancing. It is important that preferential trade agreements go beyond eliminating tariffs and quotas...

May 1999 - In the new round of World Trade Organization talks expected in late 1999, negotiations about access to agricultural and services markets should be given top priority, but new trade agenda issues should also be discussed. Including new trade agenda issues would increase market...

Trade and investment in services are 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. This...

This paper summarizes the major arguments and proposals to reform the modus operandi of the World Trade Organization-including decision-making procedures, negotiating modalities, and dispute settlement. Much has already been done to improve the internal and external transparency of World Trade...

Global commodity markets are affected by a variety of government policies that may expand or lower overall supply and as a result affect world prices for the specific products concerned. Market failures and market structures (market power along the value chain) also affect supply. This paper...

World commodity markets-and particularly the markets for agricultural commodities-remain highly distorted despite the wave of liberalization that has swept world trade since the 1980s. Some markets for commodities are characterized by imperfect competition. Where monopolies or oligopolies in...

In September 2008, the EU replaced national-level regulation on Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs) in pesticides with harmonized Community-wide regulation. Using data on pesticide MRLs for 53 trading partners over 2005-2014, we examine the effects of this harmonization on both intra- and extra-EU...

This paper looks at the role of applied services regulations in accounting for WTO+ commitments on trade in services in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) among Asian economies. The empirical findings suggest that Asian trading dyads with regulatory frameworks that are more similar and more...

In this paper, we estimate ERPT into imported input prices and export prices using disaggregated quarterly trade data for Switzerland over 2004–2011. We find evidence for high pass-through rates into imported input prices. This demonstrates the effectiveness of natural hedging. On the export...