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The returns to schooling and the skill premium are key parameters in various fields and policy debates, including the literatures on globalization and inequality, international migration, and technological change. This paper explores the skill premium and its correlation with exports in Latin America, thus linking the skill premium to the emerging literature on the structure of trade and development. Using data on employment and wages for over seven million workers from sixteen Latin American economies, the authors estimate national and industry-specific returns to schooling and skill premiums and study some of their determinants. The evidence suggests that both country and industry characteristics are important in explaining returns to schooling and skill premiums. The analyses also suggest that the incidence of exports within industries, the average income per capita within countries, and the relative abundance of skilled workers are related to the underlying industry and country characteristics that explain these parameters. In particular, sectoral exports are positively correlated with the skill premium at the industry level, a result that supports recent trade models linking exports with wages and the demand for skills.

Trade Policy • International Trade Organizations --- Empirical Studies of Trade

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As the fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) hangs in balance, an evaluation of what it offers could inform current decisions and shape future negotiations. The TPP's services component has been hailed as one of the agreement's major accomplishments. To assess the agreement's impact on national policy in the major services sectors, we created a new public database. This database reveals that TPP commitments seldom go beyond countries' applied policies, suggesting the explicit liberalization resulting from the agreement is limited only to a few countries and a few areas. However, the TPP enhances transparency and policy certainty because parties' services commitments cover more trading partners, more sectors and are in some cases closer to applied policies than their commitments under previous agreements. Furthermore, new TPP rules, including on state-owned enterprises, government procurement and competition policy, could enhance services market access. In particular, the TPP breaks new ground in prohibiting restrictions on international data flows, while at the same time creating unprecedented obligations on all parties to protect consumers from fraud and protect privacy. These dual obligations on importing and exporting countries represent a model for regulatory cooperation that could elicit greater market opening if applied to other areas.

Economic Integration --- Empirical Studies Of Trade --- International Agreements --- Services --- Trade Policy

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This paper examines the role of foreign exchange receipts in determining Iran’s imports during 1961/62-1992/93. It provides evidence of the existence of long-term relationship between imports and foreign exchange receipts, as well as the traditional price and output variables.

Exports and Imports --- Foreign Exchange --- Trade: General --- Empirical Studies of Trade --- Currency --- Foreign exchange --- International economics --- Imports --- Exchange restrictions --- Oil exports --- Exports --- International trade --- Iran, Islamic Republic of

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This paper studies the structure and evolution of trade protection in the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries in the 1990s. MENA countries use tariffs and nontariff barriers, and tariff dispersion and nontariff barriers, as substitute protection measures. Tariff levels and tariff dispersion are complements. Excluding Tunisia, the cross-country correlation between tariff and nontariff barriers is -0.46. The correlation between tariff dispersion and nontariff barriers is -0.8. The paper also develops an overall index of trade protection and finds that tariff levels, their dispersion, and nontariff barriers account for 60 percent, 10 percent, and 30 percent of overall protection, respectively.

Exports and Imports --- Taxation --- Trade Policy --- International Trade Organizations --- Empirical Studies of Trade --- Trade: General --- International economics --- Public finance & taxation --- Tariffs --- Trade barriers --- Imports --- Trade liberalization --- Trade policy --- Taxes --- International trade --- Commercial policy --- Tariff --- Saudi Arabia

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This paper uses disaggregated trade data to assess how the expansion of China's production capacity and its changing production structure may be affecting its trade linkages with other countries. It finds that China is moving away from traditional assembly operations in its processing activities and its exports have started to rely more on domestically sourced components. In turn, China's imports and exports have begun to delink, with increased domestic sourcing contributing to the recent increase in its trade balance. In addition, as China moves up the value chain, both its imports and exports have become more sophisticated than in the past. As a result of these shifts, China may be becoming more exposed to fluctuations in the strength of the global economy, and changes in its exchange rate could have a bigger impact on the trade balance and the domestic economy than commonly believed.

Exports and Imports --- Foreign Exchange --- Trade: General --- Empirical Studies of Trade --- International economics --- Currency --- Foreign exchange --- Exports --- Imports --- Trade balance --- Trade surpluses --- Real effective exchange rates --- Balance of trade --- China, People's Republic of --- Trade regulation --- China --- Commerce --- Econometric models.