International trade in manufacturing goods has risen strongly over the past decades, contributing to the expansion of global value chains (GVCs). This paper studies how two factors contributed to this rise since 1970: (i) declining "border effects" that are arguably related to the ICT revolution...

This paper documents the novel fact that Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) decrease bilateral trade imbalances as measured by conventional measure of the net export share in gross trade. While on average an RTA decreases bilateral trade imbalance by 7%, greater trade integration through a deeper...

This paper shows that a regional bias resulting from trade integration alters the transmission of a countryś monetary policy by shifting the burden of the exchange rate adjustment towards the less integrated trading partners. I first develop a simple model which illustrates how a concentration...

Gravity equations have been used for more than 50 years to estimate ex post the partial effects of trade costs on international trade flows, and the well-known - and traditionally presumed exogenous - "trade-cost elasticity" plays a central role in computing general equilibrium trade-flow and...

This paper shows that regional trade integration shifts the burden of the exchange rate adjustment towards the less integrated trading partners. Thus, they bear the cost of trade balance expansion, while competitive exchange rate moves vis-a-vis RTA trading partners result in no expansion or...

The concept of globalization refers to the growing interdependence of countries, resulting from the increasing integration of trade, finance, investments, labor markets and ideas in one global marketplace. The most important elements of this process are the international trade and the...

Recent supply disruptions catapulted the issue of risk in global supply chains (GSCs) to the top of policy agendas and created the impression that shortages would have been less severe if GSCs were either shorter and more domestic, or more diversified. But is this right? We start our answer by...

Brazil is currently immersed in the project of building a new common market, known as MERCOSUR, with its neighbors Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. It has largely been assumed that this project will produce economic growth and therefore be beneficial for the environment. However, this assumption...

The paper advances the paradoxical thesis that international investment law is developing towards a multilateral system of investment protection on the basis of bilateral treaties. Despite the infinite fragmentation of substantive investment law, coupled with arbitration as a decentralized...

WTO panels have not been called upon to resolve overly complex corporate law issues to date. However, the range of legal and economic relationships among corporate entities, and the varied situations in which such relationships may be relevant to the rights and obligations of Members under the...