Specialisation or division of labour is an important source of economic growth, but the degree of division of labour is constrained by the extent of the market. Trade in tasks represents the latest turn in a virtuous cycle of deepening specialisation, expansion of the market and productivity...

This study develops earlier OECD work on the treatment of agriculture in regional trade agreements for Latin America by extending the geographic coverage to Asia-Pacific and selected agreements in Africa. It covers over 50 regional trade agreements with respect to market access, subsidies, trade...

Do the services commitments that countries have made in their post-Uruguay Round regional trade agreements (RTAs) indicate the types of concessions that they would be willing to multilateralise in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)? While there are important legal and economic...

This report provides an update on recent developments in the field of Regional Trade Agreements and the environment. Issues arising in the implementation of RTAs with environmental considerations are examined as well as experience in assessing their environmental impacts. It is the fourth update...

How are environmental provisions incorporated in regional trade agreements (RTAs)? What are the environmental impacts of RTAs? How can RTAs contribute to green growth? These questions were discussed at the fourth OECD Workshop on Regional Trade Agreements and the Environment, held by the OECD...

Spain and Denmark are two European countries differing considerably in their development and productive structures as well as in their internationalisation process. This affects many dimensions of each economy, most notably their trade volumes, market sizes and product specialization. Spain and...

This paper examines, in France, the relationship between imports – and trade more generally – and employment. It builds on the burgeoning literature relating trade and labour markets, taking into account theories of firm-level trade and previous empirical work. The analysis in the paper...

We analyze the effects of trade liberalization on Mexican employment at an occupational level for the period from 1992 to 2009, ranking occupations by skill level. We find that the reduction in trade costs associated with Mexico's entry to NAFTA is related to larger employment expansions in...

This paper examines the role of exports in skill upgrading in the Korean manufacturing sector during the 1990s utilizing a unique plant-level panel data set. The empirical results indicate the important role of exports on relative employment on skilled versus unskilled workers. The main findings...

The aims of this paper are to review the main schools of thought on the political economy of trade and employment, to review the empirical evidence supporting these schools, and to consider the implications for public policy. Special emphasis is given to the potential costs of liberalization and...