At the Ninth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) held in Bali on 3–6 December 2013, the ministers agreed upon the WTO Agreement on Trade Facilitation (ATF). This paper assesses the level of ambition of the ATF from two angles. First, the use of softening language in...

Special and Differential Treatment for Developing Countries (SDT) constitutes a central feature of the GATT/WTO system. Its formal goal is to foster export-led growth in developing countries. Its theoretical foundations and empirical support are, however, weak at best. In particular, SDT...

Rethinking developing country status at the World Trade Organization (WTO) is essential for the institution's modernization and survival. The Trump administration has recognized this challenge and is seeking changes to the flexibilities provided to developing countries. Referred to as “special...

This paper evaluates the special and differential treatment provisions in the WTO Agreement and examines whether there is truth in the averment made by certain developed countries that special and differential treatment (S&DT) provisions have made the WTO framework of rules and disciplines...

This paper provides an empirical investigation of the medium-term determinants of current accounts for a large sample of industrial and developing countries, utilizing an approach that highlights macroeconomic determinants of longer-term saving and investment balances. Cross section and panel...

This paper provides new evidence on the existence and magnitude of the 'twin deficits' in developing economies. It finds that a one percent of GDP unanticipated increase in the government budget balance improves, on average, the current account balance by 0.8 percentage point of GDP. This effect...

Over the past 10 years, central banks and governments throughout the developing world have accumulated foreign exchange reserves and other official assets at an unprecedented rate. This paper shows that this official asset accumulation has driven a substantial portion of the recent large global...

This paper studies current account reversals in industrial countries across different exchange rate regimes. There are two major findings which have important implications for industrial economies with external imbalances: first, triggers of current account reversals differ between exchange rate...