The Russian tariffstructure contains over 11,000 tariff lines of which about 1,700 use the so-called"combined"tariff rate system. For the combined system tariff lines, the actual tariff applied by Russian customs is the maximum of the ad valorem or specific tariff. The lack of available data and...

After 18 years of negotiations, Russia has joined the World Trade Organization. This paper assesses how the tariff structure of the Russian Federation will change as a result of the phased implementation of its World Trade Organization commitments between 2012 and 2020 and how it has changed as...

Most interesting results on the welfare effects of regional arrangements are ambiguous at a theoretical level. Many questions only have quantitative answers that are specific to the particular structural features of the economy and the policy considered. So, to determine the impact of...

This paper is the introduction and summary chapter of the 43 chapter volume entitled Handbook of Trade Policy and WTO Accession for Development in Russia and the CIS. The key policy conclusions of each of the chapters are highlighted in this paper. The Handbook will be published only in Russian...

This paper examines the welfare effects of protection in two sectors characterized by high wage premia, autos and steel, to determine if protection is justified to correct for the labor misallocation due to wage premia. If wage premia are exogenous, under most product market structures, labor...

The author argues that trade diversion based on tariff preferences can be welfare-reducing because there is a tradeoff between improved resource allocation and a loss in terms of trade - where the latter loss equals the lost tariff revenue of the importing country. With trade diversion based on...

Morocco is interested in developing a reciprocal free trade agreement with the European Community (EC), although it already enjoys free access to EC markets in industrial products and is not obligated to give EC exporters reciprocal access. But Moroccan agricultural exports are impeded by...

The authors quantify the impact on Cameroon of three aspects of its new regional trade agreement with the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (the CEMAC agreement): i) improved access to markets in CEMAC; ii) preferential tariff reduction; and iii) reduction of its external tariff...

A web of trade and payments arrangements binds countries of Eastern and Central Europe under the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) agreements. However, it is incompatible with these countries recent commitments to move toward liberalized trade and currency convertibility. The...

In the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union, trade among the new independent states collapsed. To help reestablish interstate trade, the 12 members of the Commonwealth of independent States (CIS) established a Free Trade Area. More recently, four members of the CIS -Belarus, Kazakstan,...