Suchergebnisse

The high hopes that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would open up trade across the Pacific were dashed by the decision of the new US Government under President Trump to withdraw from the agreement in January 2017. Despite being controversial, the TPP had been recognized as an agreement that substantially updated and extended international trade rules responding to new technological developments and economic realities. It was thus lauded by some as the first true 21st century trade agreement. The United States' withdrawal from TPP gives the agreement an uncertain future. Yet, we argue in this paper that some achievements of the TPP might not be lost. The TPP offers important lessons for other ambitious regional trade deals both in terms of process and content. Furthermore, several chapters of the TPP can become blueprints for ongoing and upcoming negotiations at the multilateral level. A one-to-one transposition of TPP provisions into the multilateral trade agreement is unlikely, yet certain provisions could serve as valuable aspiration for future multilateral trade talks.

SUMMARYAs the world economy is integrating, trade between countries is growing rapidly. The exchange of goods not only has an economic, but also a cultural dimension. In the gravity equation literature common religion is often used as a control variable, without distinguishing between religious groups. This paper investigates the possible ways in which religion influences international trade patterns. Analyzing empirically trade flows between 151 countries, the paper finds that the five world religions, namely Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, have different impacts on trade. For inter‐religious trade the study indicates that several religions have clear preferences with whom to trade or not. Furthermore, the results indicate that religious openness boosts trade performance of countries.

International trade is one of the key mechanisms for the diffusion of energy efficient technologies. Yet, little is known how regulations to fight climate change affect the international trade in goods needed to increase energy efficiency. This paper studies the case of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), which was adopted in 2010 by the European Union (EU). The directive puts forward binding technical regulations, such as minimum efficiency requirements and energy performance certificates for buildings, and is, thus, a non-market instrument. The EPBD was supposed to be transposed into national law by the EU member states by 2012. However, the EU member states were not equally successful in fully implementing the EPBD. These implementation gaps were uncovered and quantified in a study by Ecofys (2015). Building this information into a gravity model, we test empirically whether and how differences in implementation affected trade in relevant products. We find strong evidence that those EU member states that implemented the directive to a large extent had substantially higher import volumes at lower prices in environmental products. For certain environmental products, exports equally increased. Our paper is the first to show that the implementation of environmental regulation can spur international trade in environmental products.