Until the beginning of this century, the GATT/WTO system worked. Economic research provided a compelling explanation. It showed that if governments maximize the well-being of their own countries broadly...
Economic integration of the African continent rests on two pillars: the ratification of an ambitious trade agreement and massive investment in transportation infrastructure. Leveraging a newly created...
This paper examines the reshaping of supply chains using detailed US 10-digit import data (tariff-line level) between 2017 and 2022. The results show that while US-China decoupling in bilateral trade is...
This paper explores the economic impacts of preferential trade agreements, conditional on their level of ambition. It clusters 278 agreements, encompassing 910 provisions over 18 policy areas and estimates...
This paper studies the impact of child labor standards in regional trade agreements on a variety of child labor market outcomes, including employment, education, and household inequality. It develops a...
This paper studies the effect of regional trade agreements on firms’ exports. Using detailed information on the content of trade agreements and firm-level exports for 31 developing countries between 2000...
From the Coronavirus (COVID) pandemic to the war in Ukraine, the world and Georgia are experiencing more uncertainty and accelerating disruption. As a small open economy looking to integrate with the global...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries used export and import policy as a tool to expand the availability of scarce critical medical products in the domestic market (scarcity nationalism). This paper...
For a small and landlocked country like North Macedonia, trade integration is particularly important to sustain the country's economic growth and transformation. The importance of trade became even more...
International economic integration offers unexploited opportunities to Latin America and the Caribbean. This report studies how the region’s countries can leverage trade agreements to promote their economies’...
How does trade policy affect exporters’ ability to respond to foreign demand shocks? Faced with a sudden change in the demand for their goods, exporting firms must optimally change their inputs and/or...
The war in Ukraine is a human tragedy for the people of Ukraine, but its economic implications are global. This instant report focuses on the direct impact of the war on world trade and investment. It...
This paper assesses the trade impact of regional trade agreements signed by Georgia. Using information from the World Bank’s Deep Trade Agreements database and the Exporters’ Dynamics Database for Georgia...
This book brings together recent research on the economics of Deep Trade Agreements (DTAs). What are the determinants of DTAs? How do they affect trade and non-trade outcomes? Are these effects different...
To understand the longer term consequences of natural disasters for global value chains, this paper examines trade in the automobile and electronic sectors after the 2011 earthquake in Japan. Contrary...
Trade facilitation measures that simplify, modernize, and harmonize export and import processes are particularly important in a world of global value chains where goods cross borders multiple times. At...
Regional trade agreements increasingly include provisions that regulate state-owned enterprises. This paper combines new information on the content of “deep” regional trade agreements and data on Chinese...
This paper explores the economic impacts of preferential trade agreements, focusing on the provisions they contain, beyond phasing out tariffs. Clustering 278 preferential trade agreements based on 906...
Modern trade agreements contain a large number of provisions besides tariff reductions, in areas as diverse as services trade, competition policy, trade-related investment measures, or public procurement...
Trade liberalization can spur environmental degradation. Concerns over these adverse impacts have led to a debate over the need for environmental provisions in regional trade agreements (RTAs), however...