During the twentieth century, economic sanctions became more prevalent. In the twenty-first century they have become a frequently used tool for governments seeking to change the behaviour of other countries. An extensive research literature exists on the effectiveness of sanctions. Overall the...

This is one of 10 studies for the Copenhagen Consensus Project that sought to evaluate the most feasible opportunities to improve welfare globally and alleviate poverty in developing countries. Anderson argues that phasing out distortionary government subsidies and barriers to international...

This paper presents new data on regulatory barriers affecting services trade within the European Economic Area (EEA), covering 25 EEA countries, 22 sectors and five years (2014-2018). Following the methodology of the OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI), qualitative information is...

Increasing moves away from multilateralism have created a fragmented trade and investment scenario where economies progressively combine the application of restrictive unilateral actions with bilateral and regional preferences. The application of, and exceptions to, the non-discrimination...

This study estimates the average tariffs that the producers of each of the 27 EU countries could face when exporting to the UK in the event that a new Free Trade Agreement is not reached as part of the Brexit negotiation and that trade between the EU and the UK is conducted under WTO...

Why is further multilateral trade liberalisation proving so difficult to achieve? This paper shows that Article XXIV itself, the set of WTO rules governing trade block formation, undermines the multilateral liberalisation process. Trade block formation under Article XXIV can be thought of as a...

Existing tariff levels of many countries, and particularly of developing countries and on agriculture for most countries, still give plenty of scope for trade discrimination. For non-tariff barriers there is substantial scope for discrimination within and beyond the transitional arrangements of...

This paper presents a new measure of aggregate trade restrictions (MATR) using data from the International Monetary Fund's Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions. MATR is strongly correlated with existing measures of trade restrictiveness but is more comprehensive in...

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are increasingly dealing with challenges shaped by the new geopolitical and trade environments. Besides traditional tariffs, exporting firms need to comply with regulatory non-tariff measures (NTMs) in the form of technical barriers to trade (TBTs) and sanitary...

This paper argues that developing Asia is overlooking an opportunity for increased growth and development through trade in business services. Developing Asia would benefit from liberalizing services trade as it has benefited from liberalizing goods trade. This argument rests on these key...