Since the early 1990s, regional trade agreements (RTAs) covering trade in services have proliferated, with 95 RTAs on services notified to the World Trade Organization (WTO) under Article V of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), as of June 2011. This paper discusses how RTAs...

In recent years, there has been a surge in the conclusion of regional trade agreements (‘RTAs') by the European Union with trading partners across the world. These RTAs have gradually become more elaborate and substantive, thereby liberalising inter alia certain aspects of trade in services....

Trade in financial services is integrated through Economic Integration Agreements (EIAs), in addition to the multilateral trading system developed under the WTO. Securities' clearing and settlement services have nowadays become more important than ever. The latter have gained enormous strategic...

Can regionalism do what multilateralism has so far failed to do?promote greater openness of services markets? Although previous research has pointed to the wider and deeper legal commitments under regional agreements as proof that it can, no previous study has assessed the impact of such...

There is substantial evidence that with the progressive global decline in tariffs over several decades, trade costs are a more significant barrier to trade than tariffs, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper decomposes trade costs into three categories: costs that can be lowered by trade...

This paper analyses the relationship between regional trade integration and trade costs in services industries. The empirical analysis relies, on the one hand, on a dataset of theory-consistent bilateral trade costs calculated for 61 countries over the period 2000-2011 and, on the other hand, on...

Korean Abstract: 우리나라는 2000년대 후반부터 지역무역 자유화에 적극적으로 참여하여, 미국과 EU 등 거대 선진 경제권과의 FTA를 이미 발효시킨 상태이다. 최근의 지역무역협정 논의는 상품뿐만 아니라 서비스 및 투자 분야의...

This paper draws insights from the literature on Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Modeling of potential gains from liberalization for developing countries, in particular Northern, Eastern and Southern African economies. Due to the importance of regulatory framework and to the size of service...