In this paper we study the impact of digitalization on trade costs in 58 economies over the period 2014 - 2018. Improvements in digital connectivity can reduce trade costs through multiple channels, including better access to information, lower transaction costs, the reduced need for business...

More than half of the World Trade Organization (WTO)-notified services trade agreements (STAs) in effect since 2008 have involved at least one (South or Southeast) Asian trading partner. Drawing on Baier and Bergstrand's (2004) determinants of preferential trade agreements and using the World...

Given the rise of services preferentialism in the last decade and the importance of domestic regulation for services trade, this paper examines the role of regulatory incidence and convergence as determinants of services trade agreements (STAs). Our results suggest that regulation is an...

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 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (“TTIP”) has been hailed as an opportunity for the world’s two largest consumer markets to expand inter-regional trade, investment and jobs, and to secure greater regulatory convergence that could considerably reduce costly and...

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has the potential to remake political and legal relationships between the EU and the US and pave the way to a new form of global economic governance based on international regulatory cooperation. In particular, TTIP presents an historic...

The future is drying out. By 2025, up to 40% of the world's population could be suffering of water scarcity, and yet, the role of law in the governance of water resources seems to be mostly spared of critical scrutiny. At the heart of the matter is our conception of water. Traditionally, water...