Multilateral Trade Liberalisation and FDI: An Analytical Framework for the Implications for Trading Blocs

The proliferation of regional integration agreements (RIAs) over the past several years has led to significant changes in the global configuration of trade and investment activity. Multinational enterprises now face the prospect of multilateral trade liberalisation that could significantly affect the foreign direct investment (FDI) incentive structures that were established within the range of current RIAs. RIAs that provide preferential market access to member countries modify firms’ incentives to undertake FDI activities and can lead to various permutations of trade and investment creation and diversion. This article provides an analytical framework for understanding the implications of multilateral trade liberalisation for the incentive structures of firms to conduct FDI and discusses how multilateral liberalisation could undo many of the FDI activities that were initiated in response to previous RIAs.foreign direct investment, incentives, multilateral trade liberalisation, regional integration agreements, Demand and Price Analysis, Financial Economics, International Relations/Trade, Political Economy,

The effects of the TRIPS Agreement on international protection of intellectual property rights

Draft version ‐ final version forthcoming in International Trade JournalInternational Relations/Trade,

Best Management Practices to Enhance Water Quality: Who is Adopting Them?

This study investigates the determinants affecting producers’ adoption of some Best Management Practices (BMPs). Priors about the signs of certain variables are explicitly accounted for by testing for inequality restrictions through importance sampling. Education, gender, age, and on-farm residence are found to have significant effects on the adoption of some BMPs. Farms with larger animal production are more apt to implement manure management practices, crop rotation, and riparian buffer strips. Also, farms with larger cultivated acres are more inclined to implement herbicide control practices, crop rotation, and riparian buffer strips. Belonging to an agro-environment club has a positive impact for most BMPs.adoption, Bayesian analysis, best management practices, priors, runoff, water quality, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries, Farm Management, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Land Economics/Use, Livestock Production/Industries, Q12, Q25, C11,

Processed Food Trade of Greece with EU and Non-EU Countries: An Empirical Analysis

This paper examines the implications of the European Union (EU) regional trade preferences for processed food trade between Greece and its EU partners, and between Greece and non-EU countries. The empirical analysis relies on the gravity model, and uses different estimation techniques. The results show that the EU regional trade preferences led to substantial increases in processed food trade between Greece and its EU partners, emphasizing trade creation effects. The magnitudes of these increases are higher than the intra-EU average, and are more pronounced for Greece’s imports than for Greece’s exports. The results also indicate that the EU regional trade preferences brought about decreases in processed food trade between Greece and non-EU countries, implying trade diversion effects. The findings in this paper suggest that the Greek food processing industry would benefit from enhanced production, innovation, and market strategies to expand exports to the EU market and to counter import competition in the domestic market

Changes in Canada’s Preferential Trade Network and the Welfare Effects in Agricultural Markets

There have been some important changes in Canada’s preferential trade network over the last few years. At the regional level, the re-negotiations over the NAFTA produced the generally-resembling USMCA. At the inter-regional level, the CETA and the CPTPP marked significant steps toward promoting Canada’s trade with distant countries. This paper overviews the corresponding regional and inter-regional trade preferences for agricultural products. It examines the welfare effects of the USMCA and more pronounced regional preferential schemes, and those of the CETA and the CPTPP for Canada in the agricultural markets. It assesses the welfare outcomes from different scenarios involving various combinations of presence and absence of regional and inter-regional trade preferences. The analysis underlines that the deepening of the North American market integration would lead to increases in national welfare. It shows that inter-regional trade preferences could exceed the USMCA/NAFTA in promoting imports in some cases, resulting in increases in Canada’s national welfare. However, inter-regional trade preferences may not entirely substitute for the losses in welfare resulting from the absence/elimination of regional trade preferences in some other cases. This paper suggests that Canada would generally benefit from higher national welfare levels across agricultural markets through a simultaneous network of regional and inter-regional trade preferences

Changes in Canada’s Preferential Trade Network and the Welfare Effects in Agricultural Markets

There have been some important changes in Canada’s preferential trade network over the last few years. At the regional level, the re-negotiations over the NAFTA produced the generally-resembling USMCA. At the inter-regional level, the CETA and the CPTPP marked significant steps toward promoting Canada’s trade with distant countries. This paper overviews the corresponding regional and inter-regional trade preferences for agricultural products. It examines the welfare effects of the USMCA and more pronounced regional preferential schemes, and those of the CETA and the CPTPP for Canada in the agricultural markets. It assesses the welfare outcomes from different scenarios involving various combinations of presence and absence of regional and inter-regional trade preferences. The analysis underlines that the deepening of the North American market integration would lead to increases in national welfare. It shows that inter-regional trade preferences could exceed the USMCA/NAFTA in promoting imports in some cases, resulting in increases in Canada’s national welfare. However, inter-regional trade preferences may not entirely substitute for the losses in welfare resulting from the absence/elimination of regional trade preferences in some other cases. This paper suggests that Canada would generally benefit from higher national welfare levels across agricultural markets through a simultaneous network of regional and inter-regional trade preferences

State-trading enterprises and productivity: Farm-level evidence from Canadian agriculture

The Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) was a state-trading enterprise that controlled the sale and distribution of wheat and barley produced in Western Canada from 1935 to 2012. The CWB’s regulatory and bureaucratic structures have been investigated as sources of several market effects, including prices and spatial production patterns. We investigate the effects of the CWB on productivity using farm-level data, and identify how deregulation of the CWB affected total factor productivity (TFP) for CWB-regulated crops. Farm-level production and input data for 13,000 grain farms over 15 years are used to generate a within-farm difference-in-difference (DiD) estimator that identifies how relative TFP changed between CWB and non-CWB crops after deregulation. Cereal farm operators typically grow several (CWB and non-CWB) crops in a single season, allowing us to estimate production functions for multiple crops at the same farm in the same year. Our within-farm DiD empirical strategy identifies the effects of deregulation on changes in relative TFP between crops, while controlling for many of the confounding factors that complicate TFP measurement in other approaches, such as unobserved differences between farms and unobserved changes within farms over time. This research makes a methodological contribution to the productivity literature by developing a within-farm DiD estimator, and contributes to the understanding of how policy interventions affect farm-level productivity