Investigación económica y análisis de políticas comerciales

This paper charts the evolution and diversification of trade in knowledge that has taken place in the quarter-century since the WTO TRIPS Agreement came into force. Entirely new markets have come into being, potentially redefining the very character of 'trade'.

"Pro-poor" tourism is arguably one of the best green options for addressing LDC poverty, employment and economic diversification initiatives. Although often neglected as a serious policy option -- and consequently most of its potential still remains untapped -- tourism is the leading export for at least 11 LDCs, and the 2nd or 3rd largest export for another 11 or more. It is also a major source of new employment, especially for women, youth and the rural poor in general. While difficult to measure accurately, tourism's pro-poor impacts are directly related to the achieved level of inter- and intra-sectoral linkages. Taking export diversification, employment generation and the "green economy" in turn, the working paper analyzes feasible LDC alternatives, reaching the conclusion (within the limits of data availability) that -- in contrast with the current overemphasis on agriculture and manufacturing -- green tourism is demonstrably one of the areas of greatest current comparative advantage and development potential for the majority of LDCs, via its extensive upstream and downstream linkages/multiplier effects, employment-generating and poverty alleviation capacities, opportunities for export "test marketing" of new products, sustainability, and largely untapped export opportunities. An economy wide, primarily private-sector approach is an essential element for maximizing tourism benefits -- including its multiple linkages with agriculture and manufacturing -- together with a significant coordinating governmental role to minimize negative externalities. Unfortunately, there is no automatic guarantee that expanding tourism will significantly increase poverty alleviation or local employment generation: the necessary mechanisms must be explicitly included in tourism planning and implementation.

One of the goals of the multilateral trading system is to enhance the stability and predictability of the environment in which traders operate. Binding tariffs at the WTO reduces the scope for their discretionary use. But, countries have bound tariffs at ceiling levels often substantially above the level of applied tariffs. Therefore, whether the ceiling rate at which countries have committed at the WTO is sufficient to diminish trade policy volatility is an empirical question. Using a recently built database on applied tariffs covering over 100 countries for the period 1996 to 2009, we find evidence that countries do vary tariffs. We find evidence that applied tariffs of tariff lines that are bound are more likely to be decreased and less likely to be increased, and that this “taming” effect of the binding decreases with the level of the water (i.e. the gap between bound and applied tariff). This finding is robust to controlling for political economy determinants of tariffs and to factors related to the economic cycle.

A new information note published by the WTO Secretariat looks at how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected trade in services, from tourism and transport to retail and health services.

This paper provides a review of current thinking on the economics of international trade in mineral resources. There is not a great deal written on this topic, and so my review is necessarily broad rather than deep. In some cases I am only able to cite related and even tangential literature. I first define what is meant by trade in mineral resources. I then discuss patterns of trade in mineral resources. The paper then moves on to the five topics requested by the World Trade Organization: theoretical and empirical literature on international trade in minerals; trade impacts of mineral abundance and the resource curse; the political economy of mineral trade in resource-abundant states; non-economic considerations associated with strategic mineral resources; and the impact of domestic market structure and regulation on production and trade in minerals.

The paper studies empirically fiscal policies around elections in 25 developing countries as affected by the exchange regime. It is argued that countries with flexible exchange regimes are less likely to engage in expansionary fiscal policies before elections because such policies can result in devaluations and inflation which affects government popularity adversely. The empirical results show that governments indeed try to improve their re-election prospects with the help of expansionary fiscal policies only in countries with fixed exchange rates and adequate reserve levels. For some countries, this raises doubts about the usefulness of fixed exchange rates for stabilizing the macro economy, unless reforms of the institutional framework reduce the scope for election-oriented fiscal expansion.

Two far-reaching developments have increased the trade opportunities for SMEs in developing countries. Firstly, the rise of the internet and advances in ICT have reduced trade-related information and communication costs. Secondly, the international fragmentation of production has increased the opportunities for SMEs to specialize in narrow activities at various stages along the production chain.

The paper chronicles the negotiating history of the recently concluded Trade Facilitation Accord. Analysing the various stages of the decade-long effort to get the Agreement off the ground, it examines what was at stake in the negotiations, how they evolved and why they finally succeeded - despite many obstacles and detours along the way. The study also suggests ways in which the exercise has broken new ground – for Trade Facilitation rule-making at the global level, for how WTO Members negotiate agreements, and for the world trading system as a whole.

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is broader in policy coverage than conventional trade agreements for goods and, at the same time, offers governments more flexibility, in various dimensions, to tailor their obligations to sector- or country-specific needs. An overview of existing commitments on healthcare and health insurance services shows that WTO Members have made abundant use of these possibilities. While most participants elected not to undertake bindings on healthcare services at the end of the Uruguay Round, nor to make offers in the ongoing negotiations, insurance services have been among the most frequently committed sectors. If there is a common denominator, regardless of the Members concerned (except for recently acceded countries), it is the existence of a lot of 'water' between existing commitments and more open conditions of actual access in many sectors. This may also explain, in part, why there have been very few trade disputes under the GATS to date - far fewer than under the GATT in merchandise trade. Also, governments appear to be generally hesitant in politically and socially sensitive areas to take action in the WTO. There are indications, however, that the same 'players' have acted differently in other policy contexts. For example, it appears that under recent preferential trade agreements (PTAs) the European Communities has been even more cautious in committing on hospital services and protecting scope for (discriminatory) subsidies than under the GATS. Yet, this is not necessarily true for the obligations assumed by many countries, including individual EC Member States, under bilateral investment treaties (BITs). These treaties overlap with the GATS, as far as commercial presence is concerned, and may be used by aggrieved investors to challenge policy restrictions in host countries. However, though frequently invoked, BITs do not meet the same standards, in terms of transparency, open (consensual) rulemaking and legal certainty, as commitments under the GATS.

Proper measurement and aggregation of trade costs is of paramount importance for sound academic and policy analysis of the determinants - particularly those of policy - of economic outcomes. The international trade profession has witnessed signifcant new developments, both on the theoretical and on the empirical side, concerning the measurement and decomposition of such costs into variable and fixed costs on the one hand and into partial and general equilibrium effects on the other hand.

This paper argues that interests of nationals and owners of home-based foreign capital in the formation of a Trade Agreements (TA) are not antagonistic, except under rather particular assumptions on initial tariffs among potential members. Further, if initial tariffs are endogenously determined through an industry-lobbying process, then TA that would have been immiserising in the absence of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), may be welfare-enhancing in the presence of foreign-owned firms. The rationale is linked to the effect that the entry of FDI has on the pre-TA tariff, through contributions to the incumbent government. These results may help explain recent integration programs between developed and developing countries.

This paper investigates the efficient design of rules on domestic subsidies in a trade agreement. A clear trade-off emerges from the economic literature. Weak rules may lead Member governments to inefficiently use domestic subsidies for redistributive purposes or to lower market access granted to trading partners once tariffs are bound. On the other hand, excessive rigidity may inhibit tariff negotiations or induce governments to set inefficiently high tariffs, as strict regulations would reduce policy makers' ability to use subsidies to offset domestic market distortions. Efficient subsidy rules are, therefore, the ones that strike the right balance between policy flexibility and rigidity. This economic approach provides a framework to interpret the provisions on domestic subsidies in the WTO.

This study analyses the role of Aid for Trade in reducing trade costs in least developed countries (LDCs). The analysis builds on questionnaires and case stories submitted as part of the Aid-for-Trade monitoring and evaluation exercise for the Fifth Global Review of Aid for Trade. Trade costs are high in LDCs and constitute a major impediment to their participation in international trade. The most important sources of trade costs in LDCs are inadequate transport infrastructure, cumbersome border procedures and compliance with non-tariff measures for merchandise exports. In the case of LDC services exports, major drivers of trade costs include ICT networks, poor regulation, low skill levels, the recognition of professional qualifications and restrictions on the movement of natural persons. LDCs are well aware of the issue of high trade costs, which is addressed by more than 90% of LDCs in their national strategies. Trade facilitation is the top Aid-for-Trade priority for LDCs, which is also reflected in increasing Aid-for-Trade flows. The analysis of questionnaires, case stories, diagnostic trade integration studies and existing econometric work illustrates the important role played by Aid-for-Trade interventions in lowering trade costs in LDCs.

We analyse the degree of preference utilization in four major importing countries (Australia, Canada, EU and US) and provide evidence that preferences are more widely used than previously thought. For Australia and Canada, we have obtained a new dataset on imports by preferential regime that has so far not been publicly available. For the EU and US, we make use of more disaggregated data than previously used in the literature. We empirically test what determines utilization rates. In line with previous studies, we find that utilization increases with both the preferential margin and the volume of exports, suggesting that using preferences can be costly. However, we also find that utilization rates are often very high, even for very small preferential margins and/or very small trade flows, which contradicts numerous estimates that average compliance costs are as high as 2-6%. We extend the existing literature in relation to both data and methodological issues. In particular, we construct "pseudo transaction-level" data that allows us to assess more precisely when available preferences are utilized. Using this methodology, we obtain a more realistic estimate of what determines utilization. Rather than constituting a percentage share of the trade value, our findings indicate that utilization costs involve an important fixed cost element. We provide estimates for such fixed costs, which appear to be in the range of USD 14 to USD 1,500.

It is becoming increasingly important to put freshwater issues in a global context. Local water depletion and pollution are often closely tied to the structure of the global economy. With increasing trade between nations and continents, water is more frequently used to produce exported goods. International trade in commodities implies long-distance transfers of water in virtual form, where virtual water is understood as the volume of water that has been used to produce a commodity and that is thus virtually embedded in it. Knowledge about the virtual-water flows entering and leaving a country can cast a completely new light on the actual water scarcity of a country. For example, Jordan imports about 5 to 7 billion m3 of virtual water per year, which is in sharp contrast with the 1 billion m3 of water withdrawn annually from domestic water sources. This means that people in Jordan apparently survive owing to the import of water-intensive commodities from elsewhere, for example the USA.

The article analyses the role of international supply chains as transmission channels of a financial shock. Because individual firms are interdependent and rely on each other, either as supplier of intermediate goods or client for their own production, an exogenous financial shock affecting a single firm, such as the termination of a line of credit, reverberates through the productive chain. The transmission of the initial financial shock through real channels is tracked by modelling input-output interactions. The paper indicates that when banks operate at the limit of their institutional capacity, defined by the capital adequacy ratio, and if assets are priced to market, then a resonance effect amplifies the back and forth transmission between real and monetary circuits. The paper illustrates the proposed methodology by computing a supply-driven indicator (IRSIC) and indirect demand-driven impacts on five interconnected economies of different characteristics: China, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and the United States.

This paper provides an overview of institutional, economic and legal aspects of the relationship between national environmental policies and the multilateral trading system. In particular, it analyses some of the difficulties the WTO Dispute Settlement System faces when having to evaluate disputes on national environmental policies that have an impact on trade. From an economist's point of view it would be desirable that optimal environmental policies, i.e. policies that correct existing market failures, be ruled consistent with multilateral trade law. This paper argues that WTO law in theory provides appropriate tools to ensure rulings that are consistent with economic thinking. Yet, the paper also argues that economists have a rather imperfect knowledge of the precise welfare effects of different types of environmental policies. In practice, therefore, it is questionable whether economists are able to give adequate guidance to legal experts when it comes to the evaluation of national environmental policies. This is one of the reasons why there continues to be some degree of uncertainty as to the possible interpretations of certain WTO rules in the context of environmental disputes.

In this paper, interpretation and application dispute settlement provisions of European Union (EU) Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) signed between 1963 and 2006 are analysed. This will be through the two models of Dispute Settlement in International Law: the political and adjudicative. Political elements of dispute settlement mechanisms in Public international Law and General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) served to establish those of the EU FTAs. Adjudicative and quasi-adjudicative elements of dispute settlement mechanisms of Public International Law and World Trade Organization (WTO) Law were used as parameters to set up those of the EU FTAs. These parameters also helped to define a new and unique hybrid model. The features of this model were found in Agreements with trade issues other than FTAs. It is possible, however, for future FTAs to incorporate them. The hybrid model is based on an adjudicative framework and includes both political and adjudicative elements. In conclusion, it was found that even though WTO Members incorporated adjudicative elements in the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU), the EU did not incorporate them bilaterally for a further five years. Furthermore, since the creation of the DSU in 1995, the EU has established more FTAs based on a political model than on a quasi-adjudicative. Consequently, the quasi-adjudicative dispute settlement model has not represented a clear trend in EU FTAs.

In this paper we provide some evidence of the common claim that STCs improve transparency and monitoring as well as help mitigate trade conflicts.

This paper examines liberalization of the basic telecommunications sector in a number of Asian countries and the role of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in this process. It begins by explaining the working of the GATS as a mechanism for multilateral liberalization efforts. It then presents a description of the reforms taking place in the telecom regimes of selected Asian countries, and of the commitments these countries made in the recent GATS negotiations. The paper explores the reasons why governments have taken advantage of the GATS negotiations to make multilateral market-opening commitments, even though they were not pursuing export interests. The paper also considers the limits to what was achieved by way of liberalization commitments in the negotiations. Allowing greater foreign equity participation without liberalizing the conditions of entry may raise national welfare concerns. Furthermore, certain governments could have taken greater advantage of the opportunity under GATS to precommit to future liberalization.

This paper looks at the extent to which the shift in the lower value added production to countries in the following development "tier" is actually becoming a reality.

Non-transparency is a term given in this paper to a set of government policies that increase the risk and uncertainty faced by economic actors foreign investors. This increase in risk and uncertainty stems from the presence of bribery and corruption, unstable economic policies, weak and poorly enforced property rights, and inefficient government institutions. Our empirical analysis shows that the degree of non-transparency is an important factor in a country's attractiveness to foreign investors. High levels of non-transparency can greatly retard the amount of foreign investment that a country might otherwise expect. The simulation exercise presented in the statistical part of this paper reveals that on average a country could expect 40 percent increase in FDI from a one point increase in their transparency ranking. Pari passu, non-transparent policies translate into lower levels of FDI and hence lower levels of welfare and efficiency in the host country's economy. A nation that takes steps to increase the degree of transparency in its policies and institutions could expect significant increases in the level of foreign investment into their country. This increased investment translates into more resources, which in turn increases social welfare and economic efficiency.

Despite its substantial and increasing importance to health systems and inclusive economic growth, the relationship between international trade in services and health worker mobility has been largely unexplored. However, international health worker mobility and trade in services have both been increasing rapidly, and at a growing pace in recent years.

Using a dataset of 138 countries over a period from 1966 to 2004, this paper analyses the relevance of country specific shocks for income volatility in open economies. We show that exposure to country specific shocks has a positive and significant impact on GDP volatility. In particular, we find that the degree to which the cycles of different trading partners are correlated is more important in explaining exporters’ GDP volatility than the volatility of demand in individual export market. We also show that geographical diversification is a significant determinant of countries' exposure to country specific shocks. Keywords: income volatility, geographical export diversification, external shocks.

This paper gives insights into the possible trade creating effects of service trade liberalization via Mode 4. In particular we expect that temporary movements of persons, like permanent movements, have the potential to reduce transaction costs for merchandise trade between home and host country. Exploiting data on H-1B beneficiaries from different origins in the United States and using a gravity model of trade, we find significantly positive effects of temporary movements of persons on bilateral merchandise trade. In addition to this, the paper provides insights into the determinants of temporary movements of persons.

The Cotonou Agreement introduces new fundamental principles with respect to trade between the European Union and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries relative to the Lomé Convention: in particular non-reciprocal preferential market access for ACP economies will only last until 1 January 2008. After that date, it will be replaced by a string of Economic Partnership Agreements meant to progressively liberalise trade in a reciprocal way. The progressive removal of barriers to trade is expected to result in the establishment of Free Trade Agreements between the EU and ACP regional groups in accordance with the relevant WTO rules and help further existing regional integration efforts among the ACP. In this paper, an applied general equilibrium model (15 regions, 9 sectors) is used to simulate the impact of EPAs for countries of the Southern African Development Community. The standard Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model has been extended to include the elimination of textile quotas, EU enlargement to 25 members as well as tax revenue sharing and a common external tariff among Southern African Customs Union countries. A number of comparisons between different scenarios are undertaken, in particular: (i) the EPA scenario is compared to the multilateral liberalization scenario; (ii) SADC liberalization with the EU only is compared to a scenario with simultaneous regional integration among African economies and to the case of the EU also signing an FTA with Mercosur; and (iii) a complete reduction of import barriers is contrasted with partial liberalization (i.e. only 50 per cent tariff reductions in agriculture) and with full trade liberalization that includes the elimination of subsidies. The issue of tariff revenue loss is also addressed and the required tax replacement is calculated. Selected experiments are re-run under an unemployment closure. Simulation results show that EPAs with the EU are welfare-enhancing for SADC overall, leading also to substantive increases in real GDP. For most countries further gains may arise from intra-SADC liberalization. The possibility of the EU entering an FTA with other countries, such as Mercosur, reduces estimated gains, but they still remain largely positive. Similarly, estimated gains need to be revised downwards if agriculture liberalization is not as far reaching as a reduction of import barriers for manufactures. At the sectoral level, the largest expansions in SADC economies take place in the animal agriculture and processed food sectors, while manufacturing becomes comparatively less attractive following EU-SADC liberalization. Interestingly, multilateral liberalization would instead foster some of the manufacturing sectors (textile and clothing and light manufacturing). Results also show the need for the SACU tariff pooling formula to be adjusted to reflect new import patterns as tariffs are removed.

Decision making in the WTO has become ever more difficult as the number of members increases and the range of issues tackled broadens. This paper looks at reasons why aspects of decision-making might be changed and discusses a number of potential pitfalls that change would have to avoid, such as a dilution of commitments and fragmentation of the multilateral trading system. It then takes a detailed look at the notion of ‘critical mass’ decision-making. It argues for this approach under certain conditions, as it would: i) allow for the emergence of a more progressive and responsive WTO agenda; ii) blunt the diversion of trade cooperation initiatives to RTAs; iii) allow more efficient differentiation in the levels of rights and obligations among a community of highly diverse economies; and iv) promote greater efficiency in multilaterally-based negotiations on trade rules, and perhaps, sectoral market access agreements.

The WTO Secretariat has published a new information note about how the global intellectual property (IP) system relates to the COVID-19 pandemic and potential contributions it could make to efforts to address it. The note provides an overview of IP-related measures taken by WTO members and other stakeholders since the start of the crisis.

Trade finance shortfalls now appear regularly. Does this matter for trade expansion and economic development in developing countries? Global trade finance has resumed following the 2009 global financial crisis. However, the pattern of recovery has been uneven across countries and categories of firms. The recovery has been robust for the main routes of trade and for large trading companies. By contrast, access to trade finance remains costly and scarce in countries which have the strongest potential for trade expansion. We introduce new data from a global survey of firms to argue that real shortfalls are exacerbated by perception gaps in a way that has enabled market failures to persist. This has troubling implications most directly through its effect on the ability for small firms to benefit from the reallocation of production and investment within global supply chains.

The WTO Secretariat has published a new information note on trade-related issues for COVID-19 vaccine production, manufacturing and deployment. The note, entitled “Developing and delivering COVID-19 vaccines around the world,” explores how trade policy can play its part in ensuring the rapid roll-out of vaccines against COVID-19.

In this report we first give a brief overview of trade in seafood and seafood production. We then review the basic bioeconomic theory of the fishery and pinpoint why fisheries are different from most other industries. We next review the theoretical literature on trade and renewable resources that shows how unconventional outcomes from trade liberalization can emerge. Given this background, we discuss the most important policy issues in relation to seafood and trade, including sections on managing the global commons and domestic trends in management. In the final section, we discuss specific issues that are germane to the WTO and its rules.

This paper discusses how information and communication technology (ICT) affects the quality and reach of consumer services. These services need to be provided locally, but consist of several components, some of which can be digitised and transmitted over long distances. A general equilibrium model is developed and numerical simulations in a stylised two-factor, two-region, centre-periphery setting are presented. Trade in intermediate services improves the quality of consumer services enormously in the periphery, but may reduce the quality at the centre. Trade in intermediate services also has a dramatic impact on skilled workers’ wages in the periphery, both relative to unskilled workers in their own region and relative to skilled workers at the centre and leads to a more equal distribution of income both between the centre and the periphery and within the periphery.

This is a revision and update of "Intellectual Property Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements" by Valdés and Runyowa (2012). This paper adjusts the methodology applied to assess the intellectual property (IP) provisions contained in regional trade agreements (RTAs) and the aggregation of such provisions into groups; it also updates the RTAs surveyed, from 194 in November 2010 to 245 in February 2014. New information contained in this revision relates to three IP-related investment and non-violation provisions in RTAs. The methodological revisions and new information result in changes to the assessment of the IP content of certain RTAs while the update reveals a growing and increasingly complex network of RTAs with IP content. This revision also provides new insights into possible improvements to the methodological toolkit for analysing IP in RTAs. The paper assembles detailed information about the IP provisions contained in active RTAs notified to the WTO. The goal was to expand beyond the more commonly studied RTAs, to review the full array of agreements notified to the WTO and thus to enable consideration of the implications of this diverse range of norm-setting activity for the multilateral system. Mapping of the IP content in RTAs involving parties from all regions and levels of development is necessary to better understand crosscutting trends in RTAs, and how all the parts of the international IP framework influence each other. The methodology followed involved surveying each RTA in the sample to determine whether it made reference to any of 32 different IP-related provisions. Two of the three IP-related provisions new to this revision and update are investment-related IP provisions, while the other concerns dispute settlement for non-violation claims. The relevant provisions are discussed in detail and summary statistics used to identify patterns over time and by continent, level of economic development and selected traders. The number of IP provisions in each RTA is then used to classify agreements according to their level of IP content. The first significant identified trend is the acceleration in the conclusion of RTAs with IP provisions after the creation of the WTO and the entry into force of the WTO TRIPS Agreement. A significant proportion of those RTAs contain some type of IP provision, but the number and type of those provisions vary widely across agreements. A majority of the RTAs surveyed include general IP provisions, while a smaller proportion contains explicit provisions on specific fields of IP law, such as geographical indications, patents, trademarks and copyright. The inclusion of even more detailed provisions elaborating on specific areas of IP law is less common. As a result, the actual IP content of RTAs differs greatly across the sample, with slightly less than half of these agreements found to havesubstantive IP standards that can be classified as moderate or high. The RTAs containing a high level of IP provisions are characterized by a hub-and-spoke architecture in which the wording and structure of IP provisions converged around the RTAs of specific countries or blocs. The largest systems are grouped around the EFTA, the European Union and the United States. The hub-and-spoke architecture seems to have encouraged the convergence of domestic IP regimes among the respective RTA signatories. The mechanics of this potentially crucial process and its economic implications require further investigation.

Trade has been recognized in the 2030 development Agenda as well as in the Addis Ababa Agenda for Action as an important means for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In this paper, the two way relationship between deep integration and production networks trade is investigated. Deep integration is captured by a set of indices constructed in terms of policy areas covered in preferential trade agreements. An augmented gravity equation is estimated to investigate the impact of deep integration on production networks. The results show that on average, signing deeper agreements increases production networks trade between member countries by almost 35 percentage points. In addition, the impact of deep integration is higher for trade in automobile parts and information and technology products compared with textiles products. To analyse whether higher levels of network trade increase the likelihood of signing deeper agreements the literature on the determinants of preferential trade agreements is followed. The estimation results show that, after taking into account other PTAs determinants, a ten per cent increase in the share of production network trade over total trade increases the depth of an agreement by approximately 6 percentage points. In addition, the probability of signing deeper agreements is higher for country pairs involved in North-South production sharing and for countries belonging to the Asia region.

In spite of their growing importance in international trade as well as in bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations, services have only attracted limited attention from researchers interested in determinants of trade policies and trade cooperation. This paper seeks to account for countries' varying levels of market access commitments under the multilateral General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). I develop an argument suggesting how levels of democracy and factor endowments are associated with more commitments. The empirical analysis supports these propositions, and also suggests that relative size, as well as regulatory capacity, are positively linked to GATS commitments.

This paper surveys a wide body of economic literature on the relationship between currencies and trade. Two main issues are investigated: the impact on international trade of exchange rate volatility and of currency misalignments. On average, exchange rate volatility has a negative (even if not large) impact on trade flows. The extent of this effect depends on a number of factors, including the existence of hedging instruments, the structure of production, and the degree of economic integration across countries. Exchange rate misalignments are predicted to have short-run effects in models with price rigidities, but the exact impact depends on a number of features, such as the pricing strategy of firms engaging in international trade and the importance of global production networks. This effect is predicted to disappear in the long-run, unless some other distortion characterizes the economy. Empirical results confirm that short-run effects can exist, but their size and persistence over time are not consistent across different studies.

This paper examines the background of Article 66.2 of the TRIPS Agreement, the nature of this obligation on developed country Members that pertains to the promotion of technology transfer to LDC Members and how it is being implemented and how such implementation is being monitored in the TRIPS Council.

This paper quantifies the extent of preferential trade as a share of total world trade in different regions of the world and for two periods. Results show that: i) preferential trade represented 40% of world trade in the period 1988-1992 and it slightly increased to 42% during the period 1993-1997; ii) during the second period, agricultural products generally benefited more from the existence of preferential trade agreements than industrial products (maybe due to GATT-exemption); iii) the regional distribution of preferential trade is relatively uneven with a significant share of preferential trade in Western Europe (around 70 per cent), relatively low values in the Western Hemisphere (around 25 per cent), very low shares in Asia and Oceania (around 4 per cent) and average values in the rest-of-the-world (Eastern Europe and Africa); iv) the largest increase in shares of preferential trade between the two periods has occurred in the Western Hemisphere and in Eastern-Europe and Africa; v) at the country level there is an inverted-u-shape relationship between the share of preferential trade and the size and GDP per capita of individual countries; vi) countries which are highly open to trade tend to have a larger share of preferential trade on total trade in the period 1993-1997, suggesting that preferential and non-preferential trade can be seen as complements.

This paper reviews the main developments of trade and related policies and measures in the Asia and Pacific region during the 30 years since establishment, in 1989, of the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM). The objectives of the TPRM include facilitating the smooth functioning of the multilateral trading system by enhancing the transparency of WTO Members' trade policies.

Competition agency guidelines, policy statements and related advocacy are an important vehicle for policy expression and the guidance of firms across the full spectrum of anti-competitive practices and market conduct.

The WTO Secretariat has published an indicative list compiling information on the critical inputs for the manufacturing, distributing and administering of COVID-19 vaccines. The list was jointly produced with the Asian Development Bank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Customs Organization, some COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, researchers Chad Bown and Chris Rogers, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and DHL.

The paper studies empirically the fiscal policy instruments by which governments try to influence election outcomes in 24 developing countries for the 1973-1992 period. The study finds that the main vehicle for expansionary fiscal policies around elections is increasing public expenditure rather than lowering taxes, and public investment cycles seem particularly prominent. Institutional mechanisms which constrain discretionary expenditure policies and which strengthen fiscal control are therefore worthwhile considering to prevent opportunistic policy making around elections.

The GATS does not offer a definition of "services", but services need to be identified and classified for the operation of the Agreement, especially for the scheduling of specific commitments on market access and national treatment. There is no obligation on WTO Members to use any particular classification system in undertaking commitments. Nevertheless, an informal document produced for the services negotiation during the Uruguay Round, the Services Sectoral Classification List (W/120), was used and continues to be used as the principal guiding classification system, not only in the WTO, but also in bilateral and plurilateral services trade negotiations outside of the WTO. WTO jurisprudence has also noted the role of W/120 in the determination of sectoral coverage of GATS commitments. However, services classification does not receive enough attention it deserves. This paper attempts to make contribution by providing an overview of services classification and highlighting its relevance to both trade negotiations and WTO dispute settlement. It consists of four sections. Section I reviews how a services classification system was introduced into the multilateral trading system and describes the main features of W120. Section II takes a closer look at some aspects of the classification system, drawing attention to challenges in its application, which arise from inter alia services with multiple end-uses, overlaps between sectors, and the issue of "new services". Section III considers the implications of classification on GATS commitments by examining a number of WTO dispute settlement cases. Section IV concludes. In conclusion, the paper underlines the importance of services classification in assisting governments in clearly and accurately undertaking commitments. It also notes that WTO Members have taken or suggested various pragmatic approaches to addressing challenges in the application of the current services classification system. The proposed approaches again highlight the role of classification in ensuring the clarity, certainty and predictability of specific commitments in services.

This paper studies the factors of comparative advantage within global value chains relying on a framework where comparative advantage is measured through the interaction of country and industry characteristics.

This paper analyzes the risks of preference erosion arising from MFN trade liberalization in manufactured products. It focuses on developing countries that receive non-reciprocal preferences in the markets of United States, EU, Japan, Canada and Australia. The paper estimates preference margins as the difference between non-reciprocal preferential rates received by individual countries and the best available (MFN or better-than-MFN) treatment received on average by all other suppliers. Most previous work on this subject has compared the preferential rates for individual countries with MFN rates alone, which the paper found to have the effect of over-stating the margin at risk from erosion following MFN reductions. The paper also considers the effect of less than full utilization of preference margins by beneficiaries, but a lack of data prevented the inclusion of this additional moderating factor relating to erosion risk. The paper finds that developing countries as a whole do not loose from preference erosion following MFN liberalization, although significant gains and losses underlie the estimate of the average. Almost all least-developed countries either lose from preference erosion or are unaffected by it because their exports are already largely MFN duty-free. A large number of LDCs are in the latter group. The main sectors where preference erosion occurs are textiles, fish and fish products, leather and leather products, electrical machinery and wood and wood products. As regards trade solutions to preference erosion, options are somewhat limited. Improved utilization rates may help certain countries but certainly do not offer a generalized solution. Limited scope exists for expanding the coverage of preference schemes within the destination markets considered in the paper. Other destination markets might offer some prospect, but these are limited by the fact that the markets studied dominate the trade flows of the beneficiary countries.

This Working Paper contains some observations concerning the evolution of trade and trade-related policies in the Asia-Pacific region since the establishment in 1989 of the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM), whose goal is to improve the transparency of these policies. It also draws some lessons from the Reviews undertaken. In particular, the Paper examines how reforms, either unilateral or in connection with bilateral, regional or multilateral trade agreements, can be greatly facilitated by transparency, including cost-benefit (C-B) analyses of policies and measures that take full account not just of the interests of domestic producers, but also those of other groups, including exporters and domestic consumers. While high quality transparency is not cheap, the costs of achieving it pale in comparison with the financial assistance involved and efficiency losses associated with such assistance. Trade Policy Reviews (TPRs) throw light not only on measures that appear to contravene WTO rules, although that is not their purpose; more importantly, they identify measures not seemingly covered by WTO rules, which can, nonetheless, have economic effects equivalent to measures that are subject to these rules. One of the main lessons from these TPRs is that impediments to economic development are largely homegrown. Consequently, unilateral structural reform, of which liberalization of both trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) has been an integral part, is of paramount importance. By fostering transparency, particularly evaluating the effectiveness of policies and measures in achieving their objectives and their overall impacts (intended or unintended) on the economy, the TPRM can be a catalyst for unilateral reform, including liberalization of trade and FDI. Although the latter has received added impetus from multilateral liberalization under the auspices of the GATT/WTO, the stalling of negotiations in connection with the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) should not preclude further unilateral liberalization. By contrast, the benefits of preferential trade agreements are far from obvious, notwithstanding their proliferation during the past decade throughout the Asia-Pacific region, here few governments have subjected these agreements to rigorous cost-benefit analysis. Economies in the Asia-Pacific region, especially East Asia, have been much more successful than those in other regions in achieving sustained fast growth, and thereby raising living standards and reducing poverty. This success can be attributed not so much to transparency, which is largely lacking, but to, inter alia, their broad outward-looking development strategy. This strategy has involved in particular an increasingly high degree of integration into the global economy with heavy reliance on growth of manufactured exports, high rates of national saving to finance high rates of domestic investment, including public investment in physical and social infrastructure (notably education and health), supplemented by FDI (as well as maintenance of macroeconomic stability, reliance on a functioning market system to allocate resources, and committed, capable and credible governments). However, this development strategy has left growth very heavily dependent on domestic investment and exports, which dropped sharply in the wake of the global financial crisis that erupted in 2008. This, and resulting current account imbalances, and consequent trade tension, has prompted a rethink in a number of East Asian economies of their development strategies. As a consequence, China, Chinese Taipei, Korea and Malaysia, for example, are now attempting to wean their economies off investment and exports and give freer rein to domestic consumption. As circumstances (including comparative advantage) change, and global resources become increasingly scarce, policies need to be continually reviewed in order to ensure that second-best measures are replaced by more cost-effectiveness ones. As improved productivity is the key to sustained development in the long run, policies need to be adapted to ensure that they facilitate, rather than inhibit, the efficient re-allocation of resources by markets in accordance with evolving comparative advantage. Reform needs to be ongoing, therefore. Transparency builds support for, and thus paves the way for, such reform.

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have become an indelible feature of the international trading landscape. Most, if not all, RTAs contain provisions that establish procedures for resolving disputes among their signatory members. Yet, the design and functioning of these dispute settlement mechanisms (DSMs) and, more specifically, how they differ from the WTO dispute settlement system remain relatively unexplored. Existing academic literature has primarily focused on the narrow issue of jurisdictional conflict between DSMs of RTAs and the WTO dispute settlement system. Literature mapping out and classifying systematically the DSMs of RTAs is more limited. This research paper goes beyond considering the issue of jurisdictional conflict between the multilateral and "regional" regimes. We map out the DSMs in RTAs that have been notified to the WTO and were in force at the end of 2012, and consider a typology of these DSMs based on their nature and design. We also use the data obtained from our mapping exercise in two ways. First, we identify trends and patterns of use, either regionally or by individual countries, of the different types of DSMs in RTAs. Trends are analysed in relation to five key factors: (i) evolution over time, (ii) level of economic development, (iii) regional characteristics, (iv) level of integration (partial scope agreement, free trade agreement or customs union), and (v) configuration (bilateral or plurilateral). Second, we undertake a "nuts and bolts" analysis of the DSMs of RTAs by examining their approach to various issues in international dispute settlement. Our aim is to draw conclusions about the extent to which the predominant type of DSM in RTAs has features that are different from those of the WTO dispute settlement system.

We examine the impact of banking crises on the duration of trade relations. We also investigate the effect of product-level characteristics, such as the size of exports and exporting experience, and of sector-level financial dependence variables, on the time to recover after a banking crisis. Using highly disaggregated US import data from 157 countries between 1996 and 2009, we first provide evidence that banking crises negatively affect the survival of trade relations. On average, the occurrence of a banking crisis decreases the rate of survival of trade relations by 13 percent. Moreover, we find that both the size of exports and exporting experience matter for recovery of trade relations after banking crises. Sectoral financial dependence has an experience-specific effect. Relations with more experience recover faster in financially dependent sectors. There is instead no clear evidence indicating effects of size heterogeneity, neither in financially dependent sectors nor in non-financially dependent ones. The results are robust and consistent across alternative econometric models.

Several Least-Developed Countries (LDCs) will graduate from the LDC status in the coming decade implying that they will lose preferential access to export markets. We quantify the expected impact of LDC graduation on exports of graduating and non-graduating LDCs incorporating detailed preference utilization data in a partial equilibrium model. We compare the results under actual and full preference utilization rates. Separately, we explore how underutilization of tariff preferences affects the exports of countries benefiting from such preferences.