Trade Flows and Trade Disputes
This paper introduces a new data set and establishes a set of basic facts and patterns regarding the trade that countries fight about under World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement. The paper characterizes the scope of products, as well as...
Main Authors: | , |
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Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
Language: | English en_US |
Published: |
World Bank Group, Washington, DC
2014
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/07/19894128/trade-flows-trade-disputes http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19343 |
Summary: | This paper introduces a new data set and
establishes a set of basic facts and patterns regarding the
trade that countries fight about under World Trade
Organization (WTO) dispute settlement. The paper
characterizes the scope of products, as well as the levels
of and changes to the trade values, market shares, volumes,
and prices for those goods that eventually become subject to
WTO litigation. The first result is striking heterogeneity
in the level of market access at stake across disputes: for
example, 14 percent of cases over disputed import products
feature bilateral trade that is less than $1 million per
year and another 15 percent feature bilateral trade that is
more than $1 billion per year. Nevertheless, some strong
patterns emerge from a more detailed examination of the
data. Both high- and low-income complainants tend to suffer
important losses in foreign market access in the products
that ultimately become subject to dispute. Furthermore,
although the respondent's imposition of an allegedly
WTO-inconsistent policy is associated with reductions, on
average, in trade values, volumes, and exporter-received
prices, there is some evidence of differences in the size of
these changes across the different types of policies under
dispute and the potential exporter country litigants.
Finally, these different types of policies under dispute can
have dissimilar trade effects for the complainant relative
to other (non-complainant) exporters of the disputed product
and this is likely to affect the litigation allegiance of
third countries. |
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