EU enlargement revives the debate around the participation to the EMU. We use a gravity model to see whether informal barriers have changed over a ten-year period covering the creation of the EMU, and whether their impact on European member countries’ agricultural and food trade has been modified. We find that it has led to lower information costs. We observe a diminishing marginal trade impact...

This article provides new evidence on the determinants of individual trade-policy preferences using individual-level survey data for the United States. There are two main empirical results. First, we find that factor type dominates industry of employment in explaining support for trade barriers. Second, we find that home ownership also matters for individuals’ trade-policy preferences. Independ...

This article reviews the performance of the World Trade Organization in the oversight of national regulatory decisions affecting agricultural and food trade. A picture emerges of modest international disciplines on the regulatory decisions of sovereign nations and the need for ongoing improvements. A road map to regulations is presented and empirical assessments of the effects of technical regu...

Consider a rectangular art gallery divided into n rectangular rooms, such that any two rooms sharing a wall in common have a door connecting them. How many guards need to be stationed in the gallery so as to protect all of the rooms in our gallery? Notice that if a guard is stationed at a door, he will be able to guard two rooms. Our main aim in this paper is to show that Èn/2 ̆ guards are alway...

Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) are agreements among a set of countries involving preferential treatment of bilateral trade between any two parties to the agreement relative to their trade with the rest of the world. Preferences, however, need not extend to all trade between the two, and the coverage could depend on the type of PTAs. Customs unions and the so-called free trade areas are co...

In a supply-constrained region like Asia, promoting exports has always been a challenge particularly at a time when Asia’s trade has been severely affected by lack of external demand. This study argues that price barriers have now taken a new shape which may likely to generate differential impacts on trade flows. The size and shape of price barriers would be higher if NTBs, applied by the count...