Trade liberalisation, Free Trade Agreements (FTA)

Issues surrounding international trade and investment loom large for most countries. We have extensive experience at analysing barriers to trade and investment in multilateral, bilateral and unilateral settings.

Evaluating free trade agreements between countries and regions is a key part of this work.

A second stream of work deals with trade and investment policymaking. The transparency of trade policy within the WTO is a highlight of this work as is the analysis of behind-the-border barriers to investment.

A feature of this work is the quantification of benefits and costs of changing barriers to trade and investment using global economy-wide dynamic models.

These studies typically involved:

quantitative analysis of the past and current trading relationship
construction of trade indices to ascertain whether economies were complementary or competing
stakeholder discussion to identify opportunities for export growth, and reasons why such potential is yet to be realised
identification of export barriers (tariffs, non-tariff barriers, behind the border barriers etc), and
quantitative economic modelling to estimate the economic impacts of (merchandise and service) trade and investment reform.

Some published reports on trade liberalisation and Free Trade Agreements (FTA) are presented below.

For further information contact Lee Davis or David Pearce.

Published reports

Australian trade and investment liberalisation (2018)

Australian Trade Liberalisation: Analysis of the Economic Impacts (2017)

Economic modelling of Australia’s North Asia FTAs (2016)

The impact of free trade agreements on Australia (2014)

Modelling the Trade Implications of Climate Mitigation Policy (2013)

Quantifying the benefits of services trade liberalisation (2010)

Bilateral and Regional Trade Agreements (2010)

Estimating the impact of an Australia–China trade and investment agreement (2008)

Economic benefits of trade facilitation in the Greater Mekong Subregion (2010)