This paper uses 68 measures of trade policy and trade liberalization to ask if membership in theWorld Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is associated with more liberal trade policy. Almost no measures of trade policy are significantly...

I examine the hypothesis that membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) has increased the stability and predictability of trade flows. I use a large data set covering annual bilateral trade flows between over 175...

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...

The Director-General’s latest annual overview of trade-related developments shows a marked slowdown in the number of trade-restrictive and trade-facilitating measures adopted by WTO members related to goods trade over the past year. The report, presented at a 11 December meeting of the WTO’s...

International trade flows based on information. Is the foreign market open? What are the conditions for entry? Are there customs duties to be paid and other regulations that need to be satisfied? Businesses thrive on getting as much certainty as they can find, and this requires reliable...

China’s rapid rise as a leading global exporter of manufacturing goods since its accession to the WTO in 2001 has been the focus of both admiration and, increasingly, concern, but China is also a large importer of goods, particularly agricultural products. Since China's accession to the WTO,...

The evolution of the international economic order / Chia-Jui Cheng --The WTO legal and dispute settlements systems in time of global governance crises / Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann -- The use and abuse of the national security exception under Article xxi(b)(iii) of the GATT 1994 / Peter L.H. Van den...