The Free Trade Area of the Americas FTAA will increase import competition for some forest product industries in Alabama but create export opportunities for others. Forest products loom large in the Alabama economy, both in terms of income and pollution. The present paper gauges the potential...

The issue of liberalization of international trade in services has received considerable attention in recent years. One of the benefits discussed in the literature is the role of services in facilitating goods trade among countries. We test this claim by analyzing the impact of trade in services...

Despite economic theory and empirical literature that have shown that wide availability of business services contributes significantly to productivity gains and growth, economic modelers have been slow to meaningfully incorporate services into their models. This paper employs a 52-sector, small,...

Alternative approaches to estimating the effects of nontariff measures (NTMs) on trade flows are discussed and evaluated critically. Recent econometric studies point to three results: (i) NTM restrictiveness measures based on an aggregate of ‘core’ NTMs are more restrictive than existing...

For 106 countries over 1969-2004, this paper revisits the relationship between openness, education and economic growth using the System Generalized Method of Moment (GMM) approach. Trade and growth are usually positively correlated and capital formation appears to be an important channel through...

We will be asking ourselves whether the trading blocs created or renewed since the end of the 1980s favor the multilateralization of trade, and so constitute building or stumbling blocks with regard to trade flows. In a gravity model using panel data, we estimate a set of three regional dummies...

The ASEAN+3 proposal has attracted attention in Asia and the world. We argue that a free trade agreement (FTA) for ASEAN+3 is beneficial to all member countries due to three factors: (i) existing and expected vertical foreign direct investment linkage between Japan/Korea and ASEAN member...

With the reduction in tariff barriers, Non-tariff and behind-the-border measures (NTM and BTB) have increased in importance. This paper surveys the state of knowledge with the view to drawing implications for policy suggestions to reduce those NTM barriers that are welfare reducing. Following a...

Rules of origin (RoO) are legitimate policy instruments to prevent trade deflection in a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) short of a customs union. Yet, when captured by special interest groups, RoO can restrict trade beyond what is needed to prevent trade deflection. By how much do political...

A new cooperation Agreement has been signed between the European Union and the 77 ACP Countries in Cotonou (Benin) on June 23rd 2000. A point of this agreement is regarding a new trade cooperation between these different countries in districts (or regions) gathered and the European Union, based...