WTO Working Papers

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 init Read More

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 t Read More

Two institutions provide multilateral venues for countries to discuss food safety measures at the international level: the Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex) and the World Trade Organization. Both institutions encourage their members to base food safety standards on scientific evidence. In this paper we provide a description of how food safety related scientific evidence is generated and how it is used in the con Read More

Recent empirical evidence has shown that trade liberalization promotes innovation and productivity growth in individual firms. This paper argues that different types of trade liberalization – multilateral versus regional – may lead to different R&D and productivity levels of firms. Trade agreements between countries are modelled with a network: nodes represent countries and a link between the nodes indicates the exist Read More

WTO arbitrators rely on economics to establish the permissible retaliation limits authorized by the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) which arguably serves to enforce the overall agreement. We examine how theoretical and quantitative economic analysis has and can be used in this stage of the DSU process. First, we identify, characterize, and categorize the major classes of disputes – e.g., those affecting import prot Read More

As an internationally standardized product nomenclature, the Harmonized System (HS) is used by WTO Members in their schedules of concessions and in the definitions of product coverage for a number of WTO agreements. The Harmonized System is normally amended by the World Customs Organization every four to six years. These amendments pose considerable challenges for the WTO and its Members. On the one hand, Read More

The paper discusses the efforts deployed by various players, mainly multilateral financial institutions, regional development banks, export credit agencies, to mobilize greater flows of trade finance for developing countries, with a view to help them integrate in world trade. As an institution geared towards the balanced expansion of world trade, the WTO is in the business of making trade possible. Its various functions include Read More

Economic theory has made considerable progress in explaining why sovereign countries cooperate in trade. Central to most theories of trade cooperation are issues of self-enforcement: The threat of reprisal by an aggrieved party maintains the initial balance of concessions and prevents opportunism. However, economic scholarship has been less coherent in explaining why countries choose to settle and enforce their trad Read More

This paper examines the impact of telecommunications liberalization in Africa on both sectoral performance and economic growth. Besides unilateral measures, we account for WTO commitments fostering the credibility of reforms. Actual regulatory quality plays a major role in bringing down prices and in improving access to telecommunication services in Africa. Competition, notably in the mobile telephony segment, als Read More

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (known as the GATS) is an important new element in the international framework that affects the regulation of every WTO Member's financial sector. However, except for a limited number of country-specific case studies, no attempt has been made to compare WTO commitments to open the domestic banking sector to foreign banks with actual regulatory practice in a systema Read More