This paper explores the implications of recent developments in firm-based trade theory and empirics for trade policy and negotiations. While traditional trade theory focused on the country, and the new trade theory of the 1980’s adopted the industry as the unit for analysis, the newest theory...

The accelerated expansion of China’s trade and current account surpluses since 2004, and the associated expansion of China’s foreign exchange reserves in the context of very rapid investment-driven domestic economic growth and adverse movements in China’s terms of trade have led China’s...

New trade rules being implemented as part of the on-going wave of major bilateral/regional trade agreements are impacting the complex and evolving innovation ecosystem in non-neutral ways, favouring some innovation modes (such as patent-oriented research and development), but generating...

This paper develops a new version of the GTAP database in which Canada is replaced by its provinces in order to allow the analysis of international trade agreements at a subnational level. The methodology in effect treats the individual provinces as separate trading entities, much like the...

It is well established in theory that trade liberalization impacts on productivity through the reallocation of market share to more productive firms. Since more productive firms tend to pay higher wages, the market reallocation effect also increases average wages. In addition to these...

The long trade peace that took hold with the signing of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) on 30 October 1947 is over. As of mid-2018, the world is embroiled in a trade war of global dimensions. This note charts the path to trade war, discusses U.S.policy aims and its trading...

The Trump Administration has pursued a sharply different – and for its trade partners unsettling – trade policy from that followed by the United States in the postwar period. While much attention has been focussed on the oftentimes contradictory, oftentimes theoretically unfounded, and...

The new “U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement” (USMCA) signed on 1 October 2018 sets out important markers concerning the future direction of Trump Administration trade policy. As consideration turns to the path to success in implementing this agreement, I will focus in my remarks today on what...