T agreement to create a General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) was one of the major innovations to emerge from the Uruguay round. Trade in services was not covered by the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), even though such trade had always accounted for a non-trivial share of the foreign exchange earnings (expenditures) of many countries. The best estimates available sug...

Introduction It is easy to understand the opposition to liberalized trade in established markets: Domestic producers loose from increased foreign competition. It is harder to understand the opposition to creating markets, including international markets, where they currently do not exist. Many economists and policymakers have proposed establishing tradable carbon permits to decrease the cost of...

this paper explores the effects of general and agricultural trade openness on economic freedom and alongside with the quality of institutions, on income and poverty. recent cross-country data for over 200 nations in global regions were used to estimate equations for income, poverty and economic freedom. economic freedom appears to have positive impacts on income levels, which together with good...

One of the disputed consequences of global economic integration is the possible effect that foreign economic liberalization exerts on social cohesion. Proponents of commercial liberalism see stabilization as an indirect consequence of growing economic interdependence, while globalization critics are much more skeptical. They expect, at least during the liberalization process, destabilizing effe...

extension of trade liberalization in countries is cause to increasing amount of goods in different sectors. exploit of global trade by increasing competitive power was regarded by researchers and policymakers in different countries. whereas abundance of production factor is one of the agent that makes advantage and qualitative land and labor force are two abundance production factors in agricul...

In this paper we examine how preferential trade liberalization affects the terms of trade, external tariffs and welfare of the integrating countries and the rest of the world. Our analysis is based on a three-country, three-good, general equilibrium model with symmetric customs union (CU) members. The model generalizes previous work by considering more general consumer preferences and productio...

This paper examines evidence of the effects of economic liberalization and globalization on rural resource degradation in developing countries. The principal resource effects of concern are processes of land use change leading to forestland conversion, degradation and deforestation. The main trends in globalization of interest are trade liberalization and economy-wide reforms in developing coun...

This paper develops a general equilibrium model of multi-product firms and analyzes their behavior during trade liberalization. Firm productivity in a given product is modeled as a combination of firm-level “ability” and firmproduct-level “expertise”, both of which are stochastic and unknown prior to the firm’s payment of a sunk cost of entry. Higher firm-level ability raises a firm’s productiv...

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Economists tend to exalt the virtues of free international trade, while politicians are more skeptical. This paper suggests that this is the case because politicians mainly worry about the income distribution effects of trade liberalization, while economists focus on efficiency. Using textbook economic analyses we show that compensating the income distribution effects of free trade may be more ...