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This paper furthers and updates the research on the nature of the so-called global trade slowdown. Not only do we explain and discuss the determinants of this phenomenon, but we also offer an empirical description of the recent evolution of trade and trade elasticity. With the purpose of testing whether this is a structural phenomenon or not, we build an Error Correction Model for both world and regional data on trade and income using data from the World Bank for the period 1970-2017. World, OECD and Asian countries trade elasticity figures show a remarkable reduction after the hyperglobalization period (1986-2001), opposed to those of Latin America where trade volume has not stagnated so much. This slowdown might have major consequences for any country, but especially for those which have relied more intensively on trade as an engine for growth.Keywords: Global trade, Trade-income elasticity, ECM. JEL: C22, F15.

This paper investigates the geographic concentration of water pollution. Chinese firm-level data shows that water pollution emissions are unevenly distributed across regions. Using China’s accession to the World Trade Organization as the exogenous shock, we identify a negative causal effect of export liberalization on the agglomeration of water pollution across regions in China. It suggests that more water pollution was discharged in those previously low-pollution regions after the export liberalization.

After the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, most countries gradually reduced their import tariffs to a fairly low level. However, the reduced tariffs could not be simply read as a reduction in trade barriers. Indeed, many suspect that countries tend to use more non‐tariff measures (NTMs), substituting them for tariff barriers, to protect their domestic economies. This paper uses newly compiled and detailed Chinese NTM data, together with highly disaggregated firm import data and manufacturing firm operational data, to investigate the impact of China's import‐related NTMs on firm imports. The main empirical results show that, as in the case of tariff barriers, China's trade policy NTMs mainly inhibit firms’ intermediate imports. In contrast, China's public policy NTMs significantly improve the intensive and extensive margins of firm's intermediate imports and raise the prices and quality of imported inputs. The greater the extent to which a firm engages in processing trade, the larger is the promoting effect of public policy NTMs on the firm's import margins for intermediate inputs, and the greater is the restricting effect on the prices and the quality of the firm's imported inputs.

This paper analyzes the effect of China's accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 on structural transformation at the local level, exploiting cross-sectional variation in tariff uncertainty faced by county economies pre-2001. Using a new panel of 1,800 Chinese counties from 1996 to 2013, we find that counties more exposed to the reduction in tariff uncertainty postaccession are characterized by increased exports and foreign direct investment, shrinking agricultural sectors, expanding secondary sectors, and higher total and per capita GDP. In addition, when labor substitutes from nonagricultural to agricultural production in counties exposed to positive trade shocks, agricultural output declines.

Bu çalışma, Gümrük Tarifeleri ve Ticaret Genel Antlaşması (GTTA) Madde XIX, Dünya Ticaret Örgütü (DTÖ) Korunma Önlemleri Anlaşması (KÖA) ve Anlaşmazlıkların Halli Prosedürü’nün (AHP) korunma önlemleri kapsamında teorik bir model kullanılarak değerlendirilmesine odaklanmaktadır. Adil bir karşılaştırma yapabilmek adına, Anlaşmazlıkların Halli Prosedürü’nün toplam süreci, korunma önlemi uygulayan ülke ile ihracatları mezkûr önlemden etkilenen diğer ülkeler arasındaki siyasi bağlar ile önceden planlanan korunma tariflerine karşı anlık hesaplanan tarifeler analiz edilmiş ve Beshkar (2009) modeline eklemeler sunulmuştur. Bu amaçla, Beshkar’ın analizini genişletmek maksadıyla, AoS kapsamında siyasi refahı en üst düzeye çıkaran teşvik uyumlu anlaşmayı bulmak için GATT, WTO ve DSP için bir model tasarımı geliştirilmiştir. Korunma tarifelerinin önceden planlananlar yerine anlık olarak belirlenmesinin bir ülke için optimal tarifeye değil, politik olarak o anda uygulanabilecek en iyi tarifeye yol açtığı bulunmuştur. Sonuç olarak, korunma önlemlerine ilişkin olarak Dünya Ticaret Örgütü prosedürlerinin taraflar için her zaman en iyi tarife seçenekleri üretemediği ortaya koyulmaktadır., This study focuses on evaluating the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Article XIX, the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agreement on Safeguards (AoS), and the Dispute Settlement Procedure (DSP) for the safeguards by developing a theoretical model. To make a fair comparison, we analyse the timing of the DSP, the political ties between the safeguard imposing country and the countries whose exports are affected from these duties, ex-ante against interim safeguard tariffs, and we present respective extensions over the model initially developed Beshkar (2009). For this purpose, a model design is introduced for GATT, WTO, and DSP to find the incentive- compatible agreement that maximizes political welfare under the AoS, aiming to extend Beshkar’s analyses. We find that determining the safeguard tariff level at an interim step instead of ex-ante leads to the tariff that is politically the best for a country at that instant but does not necessarily lead to an optimal tariff. As a result, we reveal that WTO procedures do not always produce the best tariff options for the parties in safeguard measures.

The bursting of the US housing bubble in the second half of 2008 triggered an almost unprecedented systemic crisis in the world economy. The financial collapse quickly overflowed into the real economy and caused, among other effects, a sharp fall in the flow of world trade. Using export data from Brazilian municipalities, we show that the subprime crisis had a more significant effect on production and employment in exporting cities than municipalities more devoted to the domestic economy. We find that the manufacturing and construction sectors of exporting cities were the most affected during the crisis. However, exporting municipalities with a substantial share of services activities were more resilient to the external crisis. This difference is significant and sheds light on the debate on the effects of the crisis on Brazilian regions and cities. Using a unique business management dataset that contains firm-to-firm controls, we also find spillovers in the labor market from exporting to domestic-oriented cities through job reallocation. Our results suggest that workers migrate from exporting municipalities to other non-exporting municipalities within the same firm economic group.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement creates the world’s largest free trade zone. The agreement has the potential to increase trade relations among its members and further promote the development of regional value chains in “Factory Asia”. This article presents the topics included in the recently concluded agreement, details the existing economic linkages between its members and discusses the expected consequences for its member states and third countries.

This paper examines the empirical relationship between trade agreements and domestic labour mobility. The domestic‐commitment motive from Maggi and Rodriguez‐Clare (American Economic Review, 97, 2007, 1374) and standard trade models with labour frictions predict that trade liberalisation should occur when labour is more mobile. I find support for this prediction. Using regional trade agreements (RTAs) covering 56 countries in 2015, I show labour mobility is a strong predictor of trade liberalisation. The probability of an RTA increases when the country pair's average domestic labour market is less rigid. When the average labour mobility increases by 1 standard deviation from the mean, the probability of an RTA increases by 14–26%. These results are also consistent with the bound tariffs negotiated under the World Trade Organization, where less rigid labour markets are associated with lower bound tariffs.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Panel Report inAustralia – Anti-Dumping Measures on A4 Copy Paper(Australia – A4 Copy Paper) marks a significant development of the multilateral rules on anti-dumping. Under certain circumstances, WTO agreements permit members to impose anti-dumping measures to counteract the injurious effect of dumping on domestic industries, typically through import duties. The Report is the first to examine in detail when an anti-dumping authority may determine that a “particular market situation” exists in the country of exportation under Article 2.2 of the WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement, potentially justifying the imposition of elevated remedial duties. The Report also develops the jurisprudence on how such remedies may be calculated, expounding the use of benchmark costs for the calculation of a constructed normal value (CNV) under Article 2.2.1.1. These doctrinal questions are central to the longstanding debate over how far the Anti-Dumping Agreement allows anti-dumping measures against state intervention and market distortions. On both fronts, theAustralia – A4 Copy Paperpanel created flexibilities for WTO members to respond to government-induced distortions. In doing so, the Report deviates considerably from the course set by the Appellate Body in the landmarkEU – Biodieseldecision, which seemed to confine anti-dumping measures to responding to private action. At the same time, the panel left open several important issues relating to the adoption of CNVs and the use of benchmarks for their calculation, leaving wide latitude for investigating authorities to inflate dumping margins in practice.

The article considers the factors that will contribute to further growth and growth of world trade. The regional structure of the world market of goods is investigated. The ranking of the ten most import-dependent countries and the ten most export-dependent countries is highlighted. Groups of goods that accounted for the largest share of exports were identified. The export of industrial goods of the world's leading countries has been studied. The dynamics of world imports and exports of goods is analyzed. In particular, time series were used to determine the patterns of changes in development over time, and an analytical indicator of the deceleration coefficient (acceleration) was used to compare the relative speed or deceleration of time series. The main triggers that affect the reduction of world imports and exports of goods are identified.

This article examines the application of neoclassical economics to the discussion of China’s transition to the market in the 1990s and its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. It shows how this theory shaped, and misled, forecasts of the impact of that accession and of China’s subsequent economic performance. It discusses the debate between mini-bang and big-bang transition policies in the 1990s and shows the two sides shared far more in common than separated them. Both sides misestimated, in fact grossly underestimated, the dynamism of China’s economy. It shows how widely anticipated predictions of crisis and collapse with China’s WTO accession were the natural result of the assumptions of the neoclassical model. It suggests that a rival model of market transition based on Bukharin and Kuznets has much to offer. JEL Classification: P22, P26, P21, B24

Earlier studies show that Chinese imports in the U.S. markets have increased significantly subsequent to China’s World Trade Organization (WTO) accession in 2001. This study uses the China’s WTO accession as a quasi-natural experiment to examine whether conglomeration affects firms’ ability to respond to a significant increase in competitive pressure. Theories suggest that conglomerate segments may outperform single-segment firms if the headquarters allocate resources to the segments through internal capital markets. On the other hand, conglomerate segments may underperform if the headquarters drain resources out of the segments. Empirical analyses show that conglomerate segments have higher sales growth and higher profitability than single-segment firms when they face intensified import competition. Given the relatively fixed market size, the results suggest that conglomerate segments gain market shares over single-segment firms. Additional analyses show that conglomerates’ outperformance is not observed when the markets in which segments operate already have high product market competition. The results indicate that the headquarters engage in winner-picking and support only those segments that are expected to perform well in the future. Overall, conglomeration encourages competitiveness, and internal resources are allocated to relatively competitive segments.

This article examines how multilateral trade liberalization (not domestic trade policy liberalization as widely investigated in the relevant literature) influences the extent of tax revenue diversification. The latter is proxied by the ratio of trade tax revenue to non-trade tax revenue. The analysis primarily uses the fixed effects estimator and covers an unbalanced panel comprising 145 countries, over the period 1995-2015. Results show that multilateral trade liberalization increases the extent of tax revenue diversification, i.e., it reduces the ratio of trade tax revenue to non-trade tax revenue. Furthermore, less advanced economies benefit more than relatively advanced countries of the tax revenue diversification impact of multilateral trade liberalization. Additionally, countries that are highly dependent on the agricultural sector (for example, poor countries or low-income countries) experience a higher positive effect of multilateral trade liberalization on tax revenue diversification than countries with a higher share of value added in the non-agriculture sector in total output. These results, therefore, call for further reduction of world trade barriers, in particular through greater cooperation among Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to promote multilateral trade liberalization.

This study provides evidence that trade expansion has contributed to the degradation of air pollution in China. On the basis of different responses of counties’ trade to China's World Trade Organization accession at the end of 2001, we exploit air pollution data from NASA to construct a difference‐in‐differences predicted trade as an instrument for our identification. We document statistically significant and robust evidence on trade expansion, which accounts for approximately 60% and 20% for the increase of PM2.5 and SO2, respectively, in China. Findings on trade pollution relation are robust to various tests. Deterioration in the environment is mainly driven by scale and trade in polluting sectors.

The fragmentation of production due to vertical disintegration has profusely impacted growth in world trade via vertical specialisation in production and trade. This article is purported to examine domestic and import contents in exports in the manufacturing sector of India, and a few select countries in Asia. We have used the World Input–Output Database (WIOD) to estimate the domestic and foreign value-added shares of export. The period of our study is from 2000 to 2014. Our results pertaining to the aggregate manufacturing industry of India reveal that while, on the one hand, the domestic value-added contents of export have fallen significantly, the foreign value-added contents of export, on the other hand, have increased significantly over time. We have also conducted disaggregated industry-level analyses, which show that there is a wide variation in the degree of vertical integration in trade. The cross-country analysis reveals that the foreign value-added shares in total manufacturing export increased for developed Asia in 2014 over 2000. In emerging and developing Asia, it either has increased or remained stagnant. This scenario indicates a larger backward linkage of the manufacturing sector in the global value chain (GVC) across countries. Here, we have primarily focussed on the six key manufacturing industries viz. Food, Textiles, Chemicals, Basic Metals, Fabricated Metals and Motor Vehicles for cross-country industry-level analysis. Industry-level heterogeneity is highly prevalent in Asia in terms of their participation in GVC.

The present paper empirically analyzes the structural change in world trade over the last two decades by examining trade integration, leadership, and regionalization through a network model. We selected 50 countries encompassing both developed and developing nations and grouped them into 9 regions for 1990, 1992, 2000, 2010, and 2017. We have undertaken two principal analyses: (i) trade intensity indices and regionalization and (ii) linking trade intensity with network analysis. Therefore, this paper reaches a trade-off condition. The major findings of the study are as follows: (i) regional integration is stronger and has increased over the years; (ii) trade regionalization is primarily dominated by developed regions; (iii) trade liberalization has reduced the gap between the center and periphery; (iv) emerging Asian economies have developed as leaders and export hubs of goods in the global market; (v) trade liberalization has transformed and reshaped the world trade structure; and (vi) trade liberalization has not driven the lessening geodesic distance and transport costs from trade, and thus, there are no major gains for many countries.

We construct a metric of geoeconomical distance from international investment and world trade to assess the risk of interstate conflict. Geoeconomical distance measures the mutual excessive acceptance of investments and exports between two countries. We show that a country’s distance to the US and China is a significant predictor of its involvement into interstate conflict(s). Splitting the sample into two periods, we find that countries approaching China at the cost of their proximity to the US are confronted with significantly higher risk of interstate conflict in the early post-Cold War period, as are countries located at the outskirts of the unipolar system as measured by their distance from the US. In the later period, a country’s concurrent motion toward China and away from the US, unlike the earlier period, does not increase its risk to be involved in interstate conflict(s). Furthermore, countries located at the periphery of the nascent Sino-US bipolar system have lower geopolitical risk than those residing close to their respective centers.

Over the past 30 years the world trade has undergone significant changes due to a combination of factors, including the establishment of the WTO and the rules of the multilateral trading system, the emergence of a network of regional trade agreements as well as deeper forms of integration, the increasing role of developing countries. This paper analyzes the reasons for the changes that have taken place, as well as current challenges that contribute to the slowdown of global trade. They include the accumulation of structural problems leading to the current crisis of the multilateral trade system and, in particular, the transition of trade conflicts to a new stage. Along with the direct effects generated as a result of the imposition of protectionist measures, the significance of indirect effects is growing against the background of the current events - there is a growing trade and political uncertainty affecting international trade flows. It is unlikely that global trade growth will recover soon, due to structural problems that need to be resolved multilaterally. Small positive effects are possible in case of gradual de-escalation of trade conflicts, but the current outcomes do not allow to draw certain conclusions.

The aim of this paper is to examine some of the current issues regarding the degree of liberalization in Serbian economy as a part of the accession process to the World Trade Organization. Serbia's membership of the World Trade Organization is prerequisite for closing Chapter 30 in the accession negotiations with the European Union. The membership of the World Trade Organization should have a highly positive effect on the economic development of the Republic of Serbia. Closing the negotiations with the World Trade Organization will, if accompanied by other relevant economic policy measures, result in a stronger national economy and its further economic liberalization. Within the liberalization process, it is necessary for the state to intervene by its measures, as necessary, in certain areas of economic and social life.

In this paper, we study the role of the transportation sector in world trade. We build a spatial model that centers on the interaction of the market for (oceanic) transportation services and the market for world trade in goods. The model delivers equilibrium trade flows, as well as equilibrium trade costs (shipping prices). Using detailed data on vessel movements and shipping prices, we document novel facts about shipping patterns; we then flexibly estimate our model. We use this setup to demonstrate that the transportation sector (i) attenuates differences in the comparative advantage across countries; (ii) generates network effects in trade costs; and (iii) dampens the impact of shocks on trade flows. These three mechanisms reveal a new role for geography in international trade that was previously concealed by the frequently‐used assumption of exogenous trade costs. Finally, we illustrate how our setup can be used for policy analysis by evaluating the impact of future and existing infrastructure projects (e.g., Northwest Passage, Panama Canal).

Global trends and structural shifts in the development of international trade, which have a fundamental character, and will continue to develop for more than a decade, are considered. It is noted that significant changes were particularly impressive in the communication sphere, which, in turn, affected the most socially sensitive sector of the economy - services. The article analyzes the causes of crisis phenomena in the multilateral system of trade regulation based on liberalization and harmonization of rules for traditional forms of trade, as well as the growth of protectionism in the conditions of the formation of trade continents - modern forms of regional agreements. The article deals with the influence of regionalism scaling on the narrowing of the free market space and the aggravation of problems of interaction between economic agents. The risks associated with the slowdown in world trade and the application of trade restrictions, as well as problems in the regulation of global trade, are considered. Special attention is paid to the dynamics of changes in the structure of Russian exports; and there is a clear discrepancy between the structures of Russian exports to global demand. It is assumed that this effect can be explained by increased competition in the world market, slowly recovering from the crisis, deepening stagnation of the domestic output, widening technological gap, as well as accumulated internal problems that have reduced the dynamism and capabilities of the Russian economy. Attention is drawn to the fact that among the TOP 10 non-raw material Russian exporters, there are no enterprises which activities are related to digital technologies, in contrast to the results of world rankings that put technology companies in the foreground.

We study the relationship between international trade and development in a model where countries differ in their capability, goods differ in their complexity, and capability growth is a function of a country’s pattern of specialization. Theoretically, we show that it is possible for international trade to increase capability growth in all countries and, in turn, to push all countries up the development ladder. This occurs because: (i) the average complexity of a country’s industry mix raises its capability growth, and (ii) foreign competition is tougher in less complex sectors for all countries. Empirically, we provide causal evidence consistent with (i) using the entry of countries into the World Trade Organization as an instrumental variable for other countries’ patterns of specialization. The opposite of (ii), however, appears to hold in the data. Through the lens of our model, these two empirical observations imply dynamic welfare losses from trade that are small for the median country, but pervasive and large among a number of African countries.

Since the inception of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995, member countries have been heavily relying on the organisation’s Dispute Settlement System (DSS). Exploiting a new database on WTO litigations between 1995 and 2014, this paper describes disputes initiated over this period and identifies potential sources of bias concerning the participation of developing countries. The analysis builds on three different models to determine country i’s probability of initiating a dispute against country j. Either it depends on the two countries’ structure of trade (the rules-based model), or it is also affected by country i’s or country j’s specific characteristics (the unilateral power-based model), or it is also affected by bilateral economic and trade relations between countries i and j (the bilateral power-based model). We find that country i’s structure of trade with j plays an important role in explaining the probability that i initiates a dispute against j under the DSS. We also find clear evidence with regard to the importance of two independent variables: first the legal capacity of i (a variable related to the unilateral power-based model) and second the trade retaliatory capacity of i against j (a variable related to the bilateral power-based). Almost all these results hold when testing for both the likelihood of initiating a dispute and for the number of disputes initiated before the WTO.

Whether the non‐market economy (NME) treatment on China can be maintained even after the expiry date under Section 15 of China's World Trade Organization (WTO) Accession Protocol is one of the most controversial issues in the WTO. In fact, the key issue of the NME status in the anti‐dumping (AD) proceedings turns out to be how surrogate countries are selected in relation to dumping margin calculation. This paper reviews the US practices concerning the application of the surrogate country method. Despite the general perception of capricious and random selection of surrogate countries, the Department of Commerce has maintained a consistent pattern for applying the criteria. This seemingly consistent practice, however, raised systematic problems—but not at a significant scale—in dumping margin calculation concerning Chinese products. This result sheds an interesting light on the current WTO disputes concerning the China's NME status. At least in terms of the US AD practices, the result of the WTO dispute settlement process may not have a significant impact on the China's exportation.

We examine whether regional trade agreements (RTAs) enhance international technology spillovers using a panel of patent citation data for 114 countries/regions for the period 1991–2007. We use patent citations as a proxy for technology spillovers. The focus of this study is on whether the depth of regional integration matters for technology spillovers among member countries/regions of RTAs. The depth of integration is measured by the extent to which an RTA includes legal obligations outside the current mandate of the World Trade Organization. We find that the depth of integration actually influences technology spillovers and that a deeper integration in a broad sense has a greater impact on technology spillovers than do technology‐related provisions.

After the countries of the EU and the USA introduced sanctions against the Russian Federation in 2014, the topic of influence on the state by other states or international organizations became the focus of attention of both Russian and foreign researchers. For Russian scientists, the topic of sanctions has acquired particular relevance, since they are at the epicenter of both the sanctions and the response measures that followed. The article presents the history of the development of measures of influence on the state by international organizations or other states, the history of studies of the effectiveness of sanctions measures in the entire history of their application is considered. Currently, theRussian Federationis under the sanctions imposed by theUnited Statesand the EU, which, in response to these measures, responded by introducing an import substitution policy. Considering the entire history of the gradual increase in the sanctions list, the state in the field of foreign trade should also detect increasing signs of pressure that would be reflected in indicators of incorporation into world trade. The author makes a hypothesis about the weak impact of sanctions on the state as a whole, and, in particular, on foreign trade. To confirm this hypothesis, the dynamics of the main indicators of foreign trade activity during 2013–2017 is considered. and a change in the commodity structure of exports and imports. The study is based on data from the Federal State Statistics Service, using methods of economic and statistical analysis and comparison of indicators, which allowed to show the degree of impact of sanctions on the main indicators of foreign economic activity. Following the consideration of official statistics, expert opinions on the implementation of planned indicators of the import substitution policy, it is possible to confirm the hypothesis of the weak effect of sanctions on foreign trade.

In the past few decades, China has put substantial efforts into liberalising its trade and economy that accelerated after its accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in December 2001. In this period, China has significantly reduced its tariffs on manufacturing imports. However, the proliferation of non-tariff measures imposed by China has made it the country notifying the second largest number of technical barriers to trade (TBTs) to the WTO after the USA. Nevertheless, there has been no case in the dispute settlement mechanism of the WTO against China violating the TBT agreement. This paper investigates the heterogeneous impact of Chinese TBTs on the imports of manufacturing products at the 6-digit level of the Harmonised System during 2002–2015. Heterogeneity of exporting firms, sample selection bias, multilateral resistances, and endogeneity bias are controlled for according to the recent strands of gravity modelling. Using the disaggregated data and controlling for these problematic issues in the estimations, paper finds no significantly overall impact of Chinese TBT on imports in comparison with earlier studies in the literature. However, the impact differentiated across exporting countries hints at prohibitive effects against few exporters. The impact on traded prices and quantities provide more insights on how these TBTs affect different exporters. The imposed standards and regulations embedded in these trade policy measures allowed the Chinese economy to gain better access to larger exporters from the more developed economies who could easily comply with TBTs without increasing prices but substituting those exporters who did not comply with TBTs, leading to an overall insignificant net impact on imports values to China.

This paper provides a comparative analysis of product standards agreements between heterogeneous countries. A simple model of vertical standards is developed where countries have heterogeneous preferences for a negative or positive consumption externality. I compare two major types of standards agreements, those based on national treatment (NT) and mutual recognition (MR). Unlike NT, MR can induce a mismatch of standards between countries, a problem that tends to get worse as country preferences diverge. Due to this mismatch problem, NT tends to become relatively more welfare‐enhancing than MR for countries with more dissimilar preferences. These findings explain why the World Trade Organization, the Trans‐Pacific Partnership, and the European Union choose different types of standards agreements. The paper also sheds new light on the desirability of international harmonization of product standards.

Global value chains (GVCs) dominate international production, world trade and investment flows today. This study examines the international fragmentation of production set by GVCs in the textile sector of Pakistan. The study quantifies the data at two- and four-digit level of harmonized code and compares it with top 15 textile exporters around the globe. The estimates through revealed comparative advantage indicate that Pakistan has a competitive edge in cotton and textile made-ups. This indicates that Pakistan needs to bring structural changes by diversifying its product range, reforming tariff procedures, improving working conditions, developing skills and developing cluster in order to promote its exports in GVCs.

This article provides a detailed economic and legal analysis of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) with regard to foreign investment with the objective to give an assessment of the impact of this new treaty on investment policies and flows in the Asia-Pacific region. Part One analyzes recent foreign direct investment flows in the ASEAN+ 6 countries, focusing on sectors of rapid growth and participation in global value chains and offers an overview of the RCEP rules on investment from an economic and legal perspective. Part Two analyzes the impacts of deep integration agreements on investment, as in the ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Agreement and RCEP’s rules on investment, with particular emphasis on the actual and potential role of small and medium-sized enterprises. The final section looks forward, with best case and plausible-scenario analysis of future impacts on FDI within RCEP, if deep integration progresses among the 16 countries.

There are few empirical research papers on the impact of trade by destination on human development, most of which focus on the direct impacts completely ignoring the indirect impacts through various channels. The main objective of this paper was to examine the impact of trade by destination towards strategic partners on human development through innovation channel captured using capital imports, while controlling for endogenous impacts from economic growth and at the same time providing new evidence on the direct impacts. This study was demonstrated using a sample of 40 Sub Saharan African countries (SSACs) and their trade partnership with China under the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) framework for the period from 2000 to 2017. To avoid bias, the study controlled for other SSACs trade partners using rest of world trade patterns. The framework was estimated using two simultaneous equation generalized methods of moments (GMM) for economic growth and human development and also considering that trade and innovation can impact both economic growth and human development. The results indicated that both SSACs trade openness towards China and SSACs trade openness towards rest of world, had positive and significant impacts on human development at 1% level. The study also found that innovation from China and innovation from rest of world had both negative and insignificant impacts on human development. The results were robust to simultaneous equation three stages least squares (3SLS) and single equation two-step GMM. The study also found comparable results when time period was extended from 1990 to 2017 and innovation was instead captured using total capital trade. These findings suggest that trade partnerships matter for enabling potential gains from trade openness on human development and to maximize such gains, SSACs need to reform and incorporate human development aspects in their key policies including innovation as these create a conducive environment through which trade impacts can be sustainable and inclusive.

This paper examines the impact of preferential trade agreements on the duration of antidumping protection. It employs a two-step selection model where the first step accounts for the impact of preferential trade agreement membership on the original antidumping determination, and the second step estimates the impact of preferential trade agreement membership on the duration of duties. Several key findings emerge from the analysis. Most importantly, the duration of antidumping protection is significantly shorter for preferential trade agreement members, compared with targeted countries that are not preferential trade agreement members. The estimates imply that preferential trade agreement membership is associated with a 30 percent reduction in the duration of protection. Second, the impact on duration depends, in part, on whether the preferential trade agreement has rules specifically related to antidumping. On average, over all users and targeted countries, the impact on duration is about twice as large for preferential trade agreements with rules, compared with those with- out rules (and both have shorter duration than non-preferential trade agreement members). Third, the duration of antidumping measures has increased markedly over time, primarily due to cases in the right tail of the distribution. This is consistent with the widespread belief that the Uruguay Round's sunset review provisions did not produce the result that many World Trade Organization members sought, but it also reflects the growing fraction of cases targeting China. Although the rising fraction of cases against China partly explains why duration has increased, it does not explain the finding with respect to the impact of preferential trade agreements and duration.

This study intends to explore the impact of World Trade Organization (WTO) which came into existence from January 1, 1995, on the export share of developing counties in the world exports of all goods together in US$, that is, in global merchandise trade. This study endogenously determines the structural break in changing export share of developing countries and how are they related to the major changes in the multilateral trading systems of international trade, in particular, the introduction of the WTO by following a multiple breakpoint analysis due to Bai–­Perron. In this context, it would be worthwhile to note that the shift toward more export-oriented strategies by a large number of developing countries has accelerated the growth of LDC exports. This study also compares the changing share of merchandise exports and trade in commercial ­services for developing countries and the LDCs in the Post-WTO regime. The ­authors follow a univariate time-series exploratory analysis to understand the trend in world export shares of all goods and commercial services for different regions of the developing world and demonstrate the potential of these regions in the expansion of trade. The study, while evaluating the impact of WTO in changing export share in terms of structural change analysis, enables us to understand the role tariff cut in the developed countries on the imports from developing countries. This study also observes increasing inequality in terms of export share among different regions of the developing world.

In recent years, there has been intense debate on the effects of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) on global trade, triggered by Rose’s article (2004) suggesting that the WTO/GATT did not promote world trade at all. In addition, Subramanian and Wei (2007) pointed out a series of asymmetries in trade liberalization led by international organizations. In this paper, we estimate the WTO impact on new members considering both total and disaggregated trade flows from 1995 to 2014 using the gravitational model and Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimator. The sample includes bilateral imports from 133 countries in the primary, textile, and industrial sectors. This article provides strong evidence that the WTO has promoted new member trade, but weakly and unevenly between developed and developing countries and across sectors examined. Developed countries continued to benefit most from the increase in world trade promoted by the WTO, but more recent liberalization has also brought gains in exports to the group of the least developed countries (LDCs). Furthermore, the gains, although small, are concentrated in primary products.

RESUMEN Este artículo tiene los objetivos de, por un lado, determinar si existió una relación significativa entre la evolución de la productividad laboral y la competitividad externa, en 88 actividades manufactureras mexicanas; por otro, caracterizar la competitividad exhibida en un periodo clave de transformación estructural. El cálculo de diversos indicadores encuentra evidencia de competitividad espuria, exportaciones crecientes no asociadas con mejoras en la productividad, concentradas en un número reducido de actividades. Finalmente, la metodología CAN muestra la ausencia de dinamismo competitivo en el sector y que las ganancias en las cuotas de mercado internacionales se dan en productos cuya participación en el comercio mundial disminuye. JEL: F14, L60, O14, O24. ABSTRACT This paper has two objectives, to determine if there was a significant relationship between the evolution of labour productivity and the external competitiveness in 88 Mexican manufacturing activities, and to characterize the exhibited competitiveness in a key period of structural transformation. By calculating several indicators, we find evidence of a spurious competitiveness, increasing exports, not associated with improvements in labour productivity, and concentrated in a reduced number of activities. Finally, the CAN methodology shows the absence of dynamism in the sector's competitiveness, since the gains in the international market shares occur in products whose participation in world trade decreases. JEL: F14, L60, O14, O24. RESUMO Este artigo tem os objetivos de, por um lado, determinar se houve uma relação significativa entre a evolução da produtividade do trabalho e a competitividade externa, em 88 atividades manufatureiras mexicanas; por outro lado, caracterizar a competitividade exibida em um período chave de transformação estrutural. O cálculo de diversos indicadores encontra indícios de competitividade espúria, crescentes exportações não associadas a melhorias de produtividade, concentradas em número reduzido de atividades. Finalmente, a metodologia CAN mostra a ausência de dinamismo competitivo no setor e que os ganhos de participação no mercado internacional ocorrem em produtos cuja participação no comércio mundial diminui. JEL: F14, L60, O14, O24.

Open trade policies are needed to ensure economic growth for all countries. This requires an understanding of the interaction between trade growth dynamics, trade costs, reforms and other factors. Recent literature has decomposed total exports growth into the sum of changes in demand and changes in trade costs arising out of ‘explicit beyond the border barriers’, ‘implicit beyond the border barriers’ and ‘behind the border barriers’. Reforms promote trade growth by reducing ‘implicit beyond the border barriers’. However, this method decomposes trade growth for a specific country. This idea is extended to analysing world trade flows using a new trade decomposition framework based on productivity analysis. Trade growth is decomposed into input, technological, efficiency effects and random effects. The first three are similar to output growth, while the fourth, a new term, captures the impact of random shocks. Hypotheses are formulated on trade growth patterns and on impact of reforms in influencing trade growth components. Model results are confirmatory and recommend its use as a supporting tool for ongoing researches in trade and development. Few of these are the New Structural Economics and World Bank’s Umbrella Facility for Trade Trust Fund (UF).

One of the prominent ways through which trading communities across the globe have increased their cross-border trade is by eliminating various barriers to the trade which are customarily encountered in the form of tariff barriers and contemporarily in the form of Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs). Trade facilitation measures aim at removing or minimising barriers to trade and to bring transparency, procedural minimalism and regulatory uniformity in bilateral, regional and multilateral trade transactions amongst the trading partners. It also balances the legitimate regulatory concerns of different nations by improving the regulatory interface between the state authorities and overseas traders. For economists and trade law scholars, the existence of trade barriers is the ‘hardware issue’ of international trade which until resolved will make the software up-gradation in international trade regime in the form of policy instrument ineffective. The intra-regional trade in the South Asian region has always been dismal, and on average it has been less than 5% to share of world trade from the region. Since the formation of SAARC, for the most of the 1990s, the intra-regional trade in South Asia has been less than 4%. Even after a substantial decrease in the tariff rates across the region, due to the efforts of the WTO and regional initiatives like SAPTA and SAFTA, no substantial improvement in the intra-regional trade could be achieved because of the prevalence of a large number of NTBs in the region.

Historically, foreign investment policies have been a fiercely contested issue for the international trade regime. The launch of discussions on investment facilitation under WTO auspices suggests greater willingness among some WTO members to discuss investment issues. The China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) provides a possible basis for negotiating investment policy disciplines in the WTO on a plurilateral basis. While the prospects for ratification of the CAI by the EU are uncertain, the CAI provides a baseline for possible investment rules in the WTO. Investment rules anchored both against the CAI outcomes and structured on a plurilateral basis are a logical part of a WTO resuscitation strategy.

Trade and foreign direct investments (FDI) represent the real and the capital side of international economic integration. While Network Analysis (NA) on world trade network (WTN) is wide, few analyses describe world investment networks (WIN), since FDI data suitable for comparison are very scarce and very complex to collect. In this paper, we exploit FDI Bilateral Statistics by UNCTAD (2014), to compare WTN and WIN in the first decade of the new millennium, before and after 2008 crisis. Results show that all countries are integrated since there are few isolated economies, and unique largest components emerge confirming the complexity of global value chain. 2008 economic crisis affected WTN, but not WIN. Geography, rather than economic similarity, is crucial in defining trading connections and cohesive subgroups. WIN and WTN links are mutual in all networks, confirming that once a link is established, it is easier to maintain all commercial relations. WIN and WTN key players are USA, Germany and China for Exports, while USA and Germany for FDI. There is a positive association between couplets of WTN and WIN links, conjecturing that FDI and Exports networks could be complements, rather than substitute.

China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 was a massive boostfor the multilateral trading system. We present descriptive evidence on the trade effects of China's WTO accession. Moreover, we combine the most recent approaches from the gravity literature of international trade to provide a causal analysis of the effects of China's WTO accession on bilateral trade with other WTO members. We find that the trade effectis positive on average. Moreover, we document substantial heterogeneity in the trade effects across China's trading partners. These findings seem to be consistent with China's position in global value chains.

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. This paper investigates whether and how import competition affects firm innovation. Using China's WTO accession as a quasi-natural experiment, we find that import competition reduces firm innovation, which is consistent with the Schumpeterian effect. We also find heterogeneous treatment effects across firm productivity and patent types. These results are consistent with the preference and knowledge spillover effects, but not with the escape-competition and trapped-factor effects.

Market diversification is one of the keys to success in the new era of world trade. Highly competitive countries have accomplished positive and sustained growth rates by not depending on a single market for their exports and imports. In Mexico, on the contrary, 80% of exports and 45% of imports concentrate in the United States. The South Korean market represents an opportunity for the Mexican economy, as the relationship between the two countries has strengthened in recent decades. This opportunity would promote greater economic growth for both countries if they reached a Free Trade Agreement, as we show in this work. The aim of this research is to assess the complementarity between these countries and estimate their external long-term equilibrium using the Thirlwall trade restriction model. Results confirm the existence of trade complementarity between the two economies and show that these are able to achieve long-term equilibrium in the external sector. Additionally, the Mexican economy would not face balance of payment constraints for growth when trading with South Korea, as it currently does with the United States.

The weakening of global value chain dynamics is considered as one of the causes of the slowdown in world trade since the 2008 crisis. To better understand the evolution of GVCs at the world level, we use very detailed trade data for 2000 to 2017, which distinguishes different production stages along the GVC. In particular, among intermediate goods, we focus on Parts and Components (P&C) rather than semi-finished products since the manufacture of P&C corresponds to activities more embedded in GVCs. We control for price effects using an original production stages deflator based on detailed bilateral trade unit-values, and take into account the evolution of the global business cycle. We show that the development of international value chains, measured as the share of trade in parts and components in the volume of world trade, continued after the crisis. Moreover, such dynamics are not the result of sectoral composition effects.

Each day, more than $1.2 trillion worth of foreign exchange changes hands around the globe, an amount that far exceeds the daily value of world trade. Approximately 83 percent of these transactions involve U.S. dollars, but not all involve U.S. citizens.