OECD Trade Policy Papers

ISSN :: 1816-6873 (online)
DOI :: 10.1787/18166873

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This series is designed to make available to a wider readership selected trade policy studies prepared for use within the OECD.

NB. No. 1 to No. 139 were released under the previous series title OECD Trade Policy Working Papers.

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Page: 1 (N° 157) , 2 (N° 105) , 3 (N° 55) , 4 (N° 4) | Next

Number	Date	Title
N° 157	15 May 2013	PDF READ The Costs and Challenges of Implementing Trade Facilitation Measures Evdokia Moïsé This study provides data on the costs and challenges of implementing trade facilitation measures currently under negotiation in the WTO. It updates an earlier study undertaken in 2005, presenting data and insights from nine additional developing countries. The study confirms earlier findings...
N° 156	14 May 2013	PDF READ Global Value Chains and Developing Country Employment Ben Shepherd This paper provides a review of the available literature on global value chains (GVCs) and employment markets in developing countries. Due to the difficulty of observing intra-GVC transactions, there is very little direct empirical work on GVCs and labour markets. However, it is possible to...
N° 155	14 May 2013	PDF READ Economics of Export Restrictions as Applied to Industrial Raw Materials K.C. Fung, Jane Korinek Governments intervene in non-renewable natural resources sectors more than in many others, including through the use of export taxes and quotas. Industrial raw materials sectors are characterized by a number of specificities: production is often geographically concentrated, firms are often...
N° 154	14 May 2013	PDF READ Global Production Networks and Employment Ben Shepherd, Susan Stone This paper provides evidence of the links between Global Value Chains (GVCs) and labour market outcomes, focusing on developing economies. The literature generally indicates that firms with international linkages—which we use here as a proxy for GVC involvement—tend to employ more workers, pay...
N° 151	10 May 2013	PDF READ Multilateralising Regionalism on Government Procurement Asako Ueno The potential multilateralisation of government procurement commitments in regional trade agreements (RTAs) presents many issues and challenges. To what extent do RTAs go beyond the 2012 revised Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), and how do they differ among trading partners? This...
N° 150	23 Apr 2013	PDF READ Trade Costs Evdokia Moïsé, Florian Le Bris Understanding trade costs is essential for formulating policy interventions designed to reduce such costs. This report synthesises all OECD work on cost factors across the entire trade chain. These factors can be located behind the border, such as non-tariff regulatory measures, market access...
N° 149	18 Apr 2013	PDF READ Different Partners, Different Patterns: Trade and Labour Market Dynamics in Brazil's Post-Liberalisation Period David Kupfer, Marta Castilho, Esther Dweck, Marcelo Nicoll This paper seeks to evaluate to what extent the greater external exposure of the Brazilian economy in the past decade has contributed to the evolution of employment in the country. This investigation has been undertaken in two ways. First, the total employment variation was decomposed in order...
N° 148	05 Apr 2013	PDF READ The Role of Services for Competitiveness in Manufacturing Hildegunn Kyvik Nordås, Yunhee Kim This study analyses the relationships between competitiveness in manufacturing and the quality of key supporting services. Three indicators of competitiveness are considered: the degree of product differentiation, unit prices obtained in export markets and the duration of trade. The density of...
N° 147	24 Apr 2013	PDF READ State-Owned Enterprises Przemyslaw Kowalski, Max Büge, Monika Sztajerowska, Matias Egeland With a growing integration via trade and investment, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that have traditionally been oriented towards domestic markets increasingly compete with private firms in the global market place. Three principal questions emerge from the international trade perspective: (1)...
N° 146	27 Mar 2013	PDF READ Export Restrictions Osvaldo R. Agatiello, Barbara Fliess Recent years have witnessed an ever-increasing resort to export restrictions in the markets for raw materials, causing heightened uncertainty about supply availability together with friction among trading partners. Poor transparency can amplify and compound the effects of restrictive trade...
N° 145	01 Mar 2013	PDF READ Mineral Resource Trade in Chile Jane Korinek Mineral resources present a formidable source of wealth but a formidable challenge to regulate in order to maximize social welfare from their extraction. Some resource-rich countries, such as Chile, have been successful in developing their economies and managing their revenue streams...
N° 144	04 Mar 2013	PDF READ Trade Facilitation Indicators Evdokia Moïsé, Silvia Sorescu This report presents the findings of the OECD indicators for assessing the impact of specific trade facilitation measures on developing countries’ trade. Sixteen trade facilitation indicators (TFIs) have been constructed, corresponding to the main policy areas under negotiation at the WTO, with...
N° 143	07 Feb 2013	PDF READ Trade and Labour Market Adjustment Susan Stone, Patricia Sourdin, Clarisse Legendre While it is widely accepted that there are adjustment costs associated with the reallocation of resources in response to freer trade, in most models these costs are assumed to be very small. However, more recent evidence is casting doubt on this assumption. This paper develops a unique dataset...
N° 142	31 Jan 2013	PDF READ Estimating the Constraints to Agricultural Trade of Developing Countries Evdokia Moïsé, Claire Delpeuch, Silvia Sorescu, Novella Bottini, Arthur Foch Agricultural trade is widely considered as an important contributor to developing countries‘ economic growth, poverty alleviation and food security. This report identifies and analyses some of the most important supply-side constraints to developing countries‘ exports of agricultural products,...
N° 141	10 Dec 2012	PDF READ Regulatory Transparency in Multilateral Agreements Controlling Exports of Tropical Timber, E-Waste and Conflict Diamonds OECD Export restrictions can be problematic if trading partners question either their conformity with international obligations or their possibly unintended negative impacts on others. Regulatory transparency can help. This paper examines how three multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs)...
N° 140	05 Oct 2012	PDF READ Taking Stock of Measures Restricting the Export of Raw Materials Barbara Fliess, Tarja Mård Governments appear increasingly inclined to resort to border and domestic measures that restrict the export of raw materials. For industrial raw materials, the OECD is constructing an Inventory of measures that have been applied since 2009. The underlying survey covers some 100 countries, some...
N° 139	29 June 2012	PDF READ Multilateralising Regionalism: Disciplines on Export Restrictions in Regional Trade Agreements Jane Korinek, Jessica Bartos The proliferation of preferential trade agreements has posed challenges for the multilateral trading system. But regional trade agreements (RTAs) also allow countries to develop and strengthen trade disciplines beyond what is possible at the multilateral level. In some instances, RTAs explore...
N° 138	27 June 2012	PDF READ The OECD Regulatory Reform Review of Indonesia Molly Lesher This paper focuses on the market openness aspects of regulatory reform in Indonesia to devise recommendations for improving the country’s regulatory processes. These recommendations involve institutionalising independent and objective evaluations of policies from an economy-wide perspective, as...
N° 137	29 Mar 2012	PDF READ Trade, Employment and Structural Change Greg Thompson, Tim Murray, Patrick Jomini International trade produces income gains across the world by facilitating an efficient allocation of production among trading countries. However, increased trade exposure also creates some challenges, and there are adjustment costs associated with changing trade patterns. Effective...
N° 136	22 Mar 2012	PDF READ Trade Effects of Exchange Rates and their Volatility: Chile and New Zealand Marilyne Huchet-Bourdon, Jane Korinek Trade deficits and surpluses are sometimes attributed to intentionally low or high exchange rate levels. The impact of exchange rate levels on trade has been much debated but the large body of existing empirical literature does not suggest an unequivocally clear picture of the trade impacts of...
N° 135	20 Jan 2012	PDF READ Trade and Innovation Nobuo Kiriyama Innovation is critical to creating new sources of growth. Trade is one of the framework conditions that can strengthen innovation in the business sector, as set out in the OECD Innovation Strategy in 2010. This paper broadly sets out three channels through which trade affects innovation. First,...
N° 134	31 Oct 2011	PDF READ Openness, Wage Gaps and Unions in Chile Jorge Friedman, Nanno Mulder, Sebastián Faúndez, Esteban Pérez Caldentey, Carlos Yévenes, Mario Velásquez, Fernando Baizán, Gerhard Reinecke This paper examines the relationship between wages and levels of trade and FDI openness in twenty-nine sectors of the Chilean economy. Over the last four decades, this country almost fully liberalized its trade and foreign direct investment, which accelerated growth of flows in both areas and...
N° 133	19 Oct 2011	PDF READ Employment and the Political Economy of Trade Craig VanGrasstek 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...
N° 132	19 Oct 2011	PDF READ A Literature Review on Trade and Informal Labour Markets in Developing Countries Laura Munro This report provides a summary of the literature on the relationship between trade and informality in developing countries, with an emphasis on the BRIICS. While main conclusions of the ILO and WTO (2009) literature review are highlighted, the report focuses on additional and more recent...
N° 131	24 Feb 2012	PDF READ Effects of NAFTA on US Employment and Policy Responses Christopher J. O’Leary, Randall W. Eberts, Brian M. Pittelko The signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was a contentious event in United States (US) politics, in particular with respect to public views about the possible labour market effects. This paper is structured as follows. First, we provide background on the political debate...
N° 130	19 Oct 2011	PDF READ Agricultural Trade and Employment in South Africa Ron Sandrey, Cecilia Punt, Hans Grinsted Jensen, Nick Vink This report provides an overview of policy changes in South African agriculture over the past three decades, and of some of the associated impacts on output, trade patterns and employment. In agriculture, the story is one of widespread substitution of labour for capital. While the sector has...
N° 129	19 Oct 2011	PDF READ Trade and Occupational Employment in Mexico since NAFTA Raymundo Miguel Campos-Vázquez, José Antonio Rodríguez-López 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...
N° 128	20 Oct 2011	PDF READ Exporting, Employment, and Skill Upgrading Chin Hee Hahn, Chang-Gyun Park 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...
N° 127	19 Oct 2011	PDF READ Trade and Employment in Japan Kozo Kiyota In light of the importance of the relationship between trade and employment in Japan, this paper examines the effects of exports on employment (i.e. the number of workers), working-hours, and total worker-hours (i.e. employment times working-hours). This paper utilized the Japanese input-output...
N° 126	19 Oct 2011	PDF READ Trade and Employment in Italy P. Lelio Iapadre This paper addresses the relationship between trade, employment and wages in Italy from the perspective of the specific features of its international specialisation pattern. It focuses on several key questions: To what extent has international economic integration, including trade and...
N° 125	19 Oct 2011	PDF READ Trade and Labour Market Outcomes in Germany Holger Görg, Dennis Görlich The German economy is characterized by a high degree of foreign exposure through exports and imports. This paper considers the link between trade and labour market outcomes in Germany. To that end we combine individual-level data from the German Socio Economic Panel for the period 1999 to 2007...
N° 124	21 Oct 2011	PDF READ Employment and Trade in France Francis Kramarz 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 draws...
N° 123	01 Nov 2011	PDF READ Trade and Employment Elena Arnal 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...
N° 122	12 Oct 2011	PDF READ Wage Implications of Trade Liberalisation Susan Stone, Ricardo Cavazos Cepeda The relationship between trade and wages has been subject to intense scrutiny in the academic literature with no clear consensus emerging. This paper adds to this body of research by moving beyond the single country analysis level to a panel including developed and developing countries and data...
N° 121	05 Oct 2011	PDF READ Comparative Advantage and Trade Performance Przemyslaw Kowalski This paper builds on recent generalisations of theory and empirics of comparative advantage and establishes the relative importance of different sources of comparative advantage in explaining trade, with particular focus on policy and institutional factors. The broad policy and institutional...
N° 120	23 Nov 2011	PDF READ Global Imbalances Przemyslaw Kowalski, Molly Lesher The search for balanced, sustainable growth clearly involves the unwinding of large and persistent global imbalances. Much of the attention in the rebalancing debate has centred on how shifts in monetary and fiscal policies affect current account imbalances. This paper goes beyond macroeconomic...
N° 119	10 Oct 2011	PDF READ To What Extent Do Exchange Rates and their Volatility Affect Trade? Marilyne Huchet-Bourdon, Jane Korinek Trade deficits and surpluses are sometimes attributed to intentionally low or high exchange rate levels. The impact of exchange rate levels on trade has been much debated but the large body of existing empirical literature does not suggest an unequivocally clear picture of the trade impacts of...
N° 118	22 Aug 2011	PDF READ Trade Facilitation Indicators Evdokia Moïsé, Thomas Orliac, Peter Minor This report presents the findings of the OECD indicators for assessing the economic and trade impact of specific trade facilitation measures in OECD countries. Twelve trade facilitation indicators (TFIs) have been constructed, corresponding to the main policy areas under negotiation at the WTO,...
N° 117	10 Aug 2011	PDF READ Trade in Tasks Rainer Lanz, Sébastien Miroudot, Hildegunn Kyvik Nordås 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...
N° 116	24 June 2011	PDF READ Estimating the Constraints to Trade of Developing Countries Jean-Jacques Hallaert, Ricardo Cavazos Cepeda, Gimin Kang The severity of binding constraints to trade expansion in developing countries and the importance of the complementary policies that will maximize the impact of trade reforms on trade and economic growth are identified and quantified in this report. As trade-related needs of developing...
N° 115	28 June 2011	PDF READ Trade in Information and Communications Technology and its Contribution to Trade and Innovation Nobuo Kiriyama Information and communications technology (ICT) has been seen as a major contributor to productivity growth and as a key tool for innovation. Trade liberalisation can play a role in encouraging ICT adoption by fostering competition and by reducing ICT prices. While the trade in ICT goods has...
N° 114	24 June 2011	PDF READ Intra-Firm Trade Rainer Lanz, Sébastien Miroudot The emergence of global value chains and the expansion of activities of multinational enterprises have increased the value of intra-firm trade flows. Despite growing attention from policymakers, few data are collected on trade transactions between related parties. Available evidence suggests...
N° 113	01 Apr 2011	PDF READ Trade and Innovation: Pharmaceuticals Nobuo Kiriyama Globalisation in the pharmaceuticals sector is entering a new phase. Many new drugs are marketed globally, and these revenues encourage further investment in research and development (R&D). The industry is undergoing substantial transition, with increased competition and downward pressure on...
N° 112	14 Apr 2011	PDF READ The Political Economy of Services in Regional Trade Agreements Craig VanGrasstek 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...
N° 111	01 Apr 2011	PDF READ Transparency Mechanisms and Non-Tariff Measures Evdokia Moïsé Lack of regulatory transparency is a major and recurrent obstacle for businesses seeking to trade internationally. This study finds that transparency mechanisms applied at different stages of the design, finalisation and implementation of domestic regulation have allowed countries to reduce...
N° 110	01 Apr 2011	PDF READ Dynamic Gains from Trade Susan Stone, Ben Shepherd Dynamic gains from trade can be an important conduit for increased firm-level innovation and productivity, both key components of economic growth. This paper builds on previous research on the dynamic gains from trade by moving beyond a single country basis to examine impacts on firm-level...
N° 109	01 Apr 2011	PDF READ The Role of Factor Content in Trade Susan Stone, Ricardo Cavazos Cepeda, Anna Jankowska The pattern of trade analysed from a factor content perspective reflects the relative factor endowments of the countries examined. Although some large economies, such as the United States, seem to exhibit counter-intuitive behaviour, this is reversed when intermediate trade is taken into...
N° 108	01 Mar 2011	PDF READ To What Extent Are High-Quality Logistics Services Trade Facilitating? Jane Korinek, Patricia Sourdin Trade logistics facilitate trade. Quality logistics services play an important role in facilitating the transportation of international trade in goods: inefficient logistics services impede trade by imposing an extra cost in terms of time as well as money. As developed nations shift from...
N° 107	31 Jan 2011	PDF READ The Impact of Trade Liberalisation on Jobs and Growth OECD This report shows how more open markets in goods and services can contribute to creating jobs and increase incomes. Reducing tariffs and non-tariff barriers can help in the short run where the economic crisis has led to significant involuntary unemployment by reducing costs of imported products...
N° 106	06 Dec 2010	PDF READ Multilateralising Regionalism: How Preferential Are Services Commitments in Regional Trade Agreements? Sébastien Miroudot, Jehan Sauvage, Marie Sudreau This report examines services schedules of commitments in 56 regional trade agreements (RTAs) where an OECD country is a party. The preferential content of RTAs is assessed through an analysis of market access and national treatment commitments at the level of the 155 sub-sectors of the General...

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Page: 1 (N° 157) , 2 (N° 105) , 3 (N° 55) , 4 (N° 4) | Next