There are three well-known observations about the current regional trade policy of Europe. The first one is the central role played by the European Union in the worldwide spreading of regional agreements. The second is the new policy of signing bilateral deep regional trade agreements. The third...

This paper uses a structural gravity model to show the effects of services policies on manufacturing exports. Whereas the previous literature has focused on indirect effects of policies - flowing through productivity effects in domestic services markets - we look at direct effects, namely the...

This paper analyzes the linkage between services and manufacturing productivity performance, using firm-level data for over 100 developing countries. We find strong evidence for such a linkage, although the effect is small: at the average rate of services input intensity, a 10% improvement in...

The World Bank has developed a novel method for measuring countries connectivity in global networks and has applied it to the global air transport network. Connectivity in this context is defined as a country s relative position in that network in terms of the total push and pull it exerts on...

We test the hypothesis that product standards harmonised to de facto international standards are less trade restrictive than ones that are not. To do this, we construct a new database of European Union (EU) product standards. We identify standards that are aligned with International Organisation...