This paper quantifies potential costs of issue linkage examining trade preferences granted under the US Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). Preferential market access via US GSP is conditional on political practices by beneficiaries. Using monthly import data, I study trade policy...

This paper examines the evolution of global merchandise trade, between 2010 and 2022, assessing the share of imports subject to regional trade agreements (RTAs). A key question for us is whether the share of merchandise trade subject to preferences has kept pace with the proliferation in RTAs....

The Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN) principle has historically been instrumental in promoting stability and equitable trade conditions. In recent decades there has been a rise in bilateral and regional trade agreements, which deviate from the MFN principle in providing more favourable tariff...

International trade increases aggregate welfare but also creates winners and losers, which makes free trade a contentious political issue. Recent research has established that individuals are more sensitive to anti-trade information about the prospect of employment loss than to pro-trade...

How does dismantling deep integration affect international trade? This paper provides new evidence on the consequences of disintegration by estimating the impact of Brexit on goods trade by UK firms. The UK’s exit from the EU’s single market and customs union in January 2021 led to an...

The magnitude of returns to colonial-era investments in Africa has been addressed in an extensive literature, as have the nature and legacies of extractive colonial institutions. However, the link between these institutions and the profitability of firms remains unclear. We reconstruct the...

The European Union (EU) supports developing countries with a unilateral trade preference scheme. The scheme underwent a major reform in 2014, in which many countries lost access to reduced tariff rates. We analyse how this radical step that removed preferences from 103 countries by 2018 fits...

Over the past 30 years, “deep trade agreements” (DTAs) have proliferated. DTAs go beyond traditional preferential trade agreements focused historically on reducing tariff rates on goods trade, influencing the behavior of exporting firms and multinational enterprises (MNEs) via a broad swath...

Many developed countries grant preferential tariffs to exporters from developing countries through the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), aiming to enhance growth through exporting. On December 31st, 2020, the US GSP expired because the US Congress failed to agree on renewing the...

The project objective is to assess CSO participation in the EU-SADC EPA signed in 2016 and offer recommendations to enhance CSO roles. The EPA focuses on trade and economic cooperation. Despite its potential, CSO involvement in the SADC region has been minimal. As a result of the inception...

The project objective is to assess CSO participation in the EU-SADC EPA signed in 2016 and offer recommendations to enhance CSO roles. The EPA focuses on trade and economic cooperation. Despite its potential, CSO involvement in the SADC region has been minimal. As a result of the inception...

While global value chains (GVCs) are considered an important development escalator, concerns over their environmental consequences have been increasing. By providing opportunities to shift production to developing economies, GVCs risk carbon leakage. Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have...

Using highly disaggregated customs-transaction-level data, we study the importer price effects of tariffs in the context of preferential trade agreements for South African imports of frozen bone-in chicken. We focus first on the firm-level impact of tariffs on import prices. Findings suggest no...

Rules of origin are critical components of preferential trade agreements designed to stop products coming in under insufficient transformation or through the partner that applies the lowest tariff. But in practice, these rules are often needlessly complex, undoing the benefits of market access...

The main objective of the African Continental Free Trade Area is to eliminate trade barriers and boost intra-Africa trade. This column argues that implementing the Trade Facilitation Agreement's provisions would be a powerful complement to the free trade area's tariff-reduction agenda. A...

This paper quantifies potential costs of issue linkage examining trade preferences granted under the US Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). Preferential market access via US GSP is conditional on political practices by beneficiaries. Using monthly import data, I study trade policy...