This paper highlights the importance of multilateral cooperation as an avenue for tackling technical barriers to trade (TBTs). These non-tariff barriers are some of the most prevalent affecting global trade. While the US-China trade war and its tariff escalation was grabbing headlines,...

This paper analyzes the effects of the current trade conflict on developing Asia using the Asian Development Bank's Multiregional Input - Output Table (MRIOT), allowing us to calculate the impact on individual countries and on sectors within countries. The analysis estimates the direct impact on...

Ever since the early 20th century, Argentina has failed to fully reap the benefits that integrating into the world economy can offer. With exports and imports only accounting for less than 30% of GDP, Argentina is significantly less integrated into the world economy than other emerging market...

World trade growth was rapid in the two decades prior to the global financial crisis but has halved subsequently. There are both structural and cyclical reasons for the slowdown. A deceleration in the rate of trade liberalisation post 2000 was initially obscured by the ongoing expansion of...

The paper mainly studies trade complementarity between China and three Baltic States, namely Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The paper first introduces China and the three Baltic States’ current trade situation. It then makes an empirical analysis on the trade complementarity between China and...

The practice of trade cost measurement faces several challenges related to data quality, methodology and theory; but the major issue is that of data scarcity. Due to these facts both domestic and asymmetric trade costs have been ignored despite being a feature of modern trade models. This paper...

Trade facilitation policy focuses on accelerated and transparent shipment processing to reduce trade costs. A common measure to evaluate processing frictions is the time it takes to import. In this paper we translate import processing times to costs. Our theory considers that shipment processing...

This paper traces the growth of Chinese exports in the post-Mao era, and the implications for policy making within China. The first part of the paper provides a statistical overview of the growth in Chinese trade since 1978, and suggests that this growth was achieved through a combination of two...

We estimate import processing costs based on the time it takes to import. Our theory extends existing time-cost measures to account for uncertainty in import processing. We use detailed, highly disaggregated data on import processing dates and import values to provide evidence for our theory and...

In 2016, the world became aware of the Chinese Communist Party’s repressive campaign against the Muslim Uyghur populace of China’s far west Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, under which upwards of one million Uyghurs have been detained in reeducation and forced labor camps. This paper...