While other emerging regions were thriving, MENA's aggregate export performance over the past two decades has been consistently weak. Using detailed firm-level export data from Customs administrations, this report explains why. One central finding is that the size distribution of MENA's...

This volume includes papers that were first presented and discussed at a workshop on 'The Fragmentation of Global Production and Trade in Value- Added: Developing New Measures of Cross Border Trade', held at the World Bank in Washington, DC, on 9 to 10 June, 2011. This publication is structured...

India's trade policy establishment is perceived to be somewhat wary of multilateral engagement, even though India is implementing substantial economic, and trade policy reforms. Some essays in this well-researched volume may throw light on this paradox. More important, the essays take a hard...

International barriers to services trade are deeply intertwined with national regulatory, investment, and immigration policies. Accordingly, the liberalization of trade in services is considerably more complex that the liberalization of trade in goods. Sector-specific issues abound. This book...

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is today dealing with an issue that lies at the interface of two major challenges the world faces, trade liberalization and international migration. Greater freedom for the "temporary movement of individual service suppliers" is being negotiated under the...

Some see trade in services as irrelevant to the development agenda for least developed countries (LDCs). Others see few benefits from past market openings by LDCs. This book debunks both views. It finds that serious imperfections in Zambia's reform of services trade deprived the country of...

The book builds on previous research, including that by the World Bank, on trade in services. Such research includes analyses of the effect of liberalizing services in developing countries and sectoral studies on financial, transportation, telecommunication, and professional services, as well as...