Rules of Origin (RoO) are essential components of any preferential trade agreement (PTA) short of a full customs union. The recent proliferation of PTAs has led to increased interest in the effects of RoO with empirical estimates consistently showing that they act as barriers to intra-PTA trade....

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Rules of Origin (RoOs) determine the conditions for the application of the Agreement's tariff preferences. The effectiveness of existing preferential trade agreements within the continent is undermined by heterogeneous RoO regimes and costly trade...

Recent calls for reform of the rules of origin in preferential trade arrangements such as the GSP as well as in many free trade agreements between developed and developing countries have focused almost exclusively on the need to relax the requirements of these rules. Without fundamentally...

In a three-country Customs Union (CU) formation game, I introduce international trade in intermediate inputs and Rules of Origin (RoO) restrictions. In the case of symmetric countries, I show that as countries become more involved in global supply chains, global free trade is less likely to be a...