Intellectual property rights affect international trade flows when protected goods move across national boundaries. And intellectual property rights have grown in importance as the share of knowledge-intensive or high-technology products in international trade has doubled (from 12 percent in...

Until recently, trade in services was mostly ignored by iinternational economists, reflecting a perception that services were nontradable. This has never been true. Transportation and travel, for example, have always been important economic activities. In 1995, services trade climbed to a...

This paper tests a neo-Schumpeterian model with industry-level data to analyze how Brazil, India, and China are catching up with South Korea’s technological frontier in a globalized world. The paper validates Aghion et al.’s inverted-U hypothesis that industries that are closer to the...

In this paper, the authors explore the complex, long, and unique process of accession to the World Trade Organization, with its intertwined economic, legal, and political dimensions. Referring to country case studies and sector-specific issues, the paper organizes some of the current reflections...

Several studies have quantified the influence of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the earlier Canada - United States Free Trade Agreement on member countries. Less attention has been paid to their effects on nonmembers. The authors try to quantify NAFTA's third-party effects...

Drawing on the game theory concepts, the authors discuss why countries form themselves into trading blocs and what the relations between these blocs are likely to be. They identify three types of regimes: (a) unilateral trade policies - which are noncooperatives; (b) multilateral agreements...

The authors estimate the potential commercial benefits that tropical timber producing countries could enjoy by adopting timber certification schemes. Such benefits are crucial for encouraging the supply of certified timber. Timber certification is a reality: various countries and organizations...

The authors analyze the effect of policy reform in basic telecommunications on sectoral performance using a new panel data set for 86 developing countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean over the period 1985 to 1999. The authors address three questions:...

Every major regional trade agreement now has a services dimension. Is trade in services so different that there is need to modify the conclusions on preferential agreements pertaining to goods reached so far? The authors first examine the implications of unilateral policy choices in a particular...

To address questions about how stronger patent rights will affect India's pharmaceutical industry, the author simulates the effects of introducing such protection - as required by the World trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) - on market structure...