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Exports help developing countries to expand their production, promote industrialization and accelerate their economic growth. They played an important part in the economic transformation of Southeast Asian countries. The Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) is one of the ways in which developing countries can increase their exports to the markets of developed nations. The GSP, a unilateral, non‐reciprocal program agreed under the United Nations provides preferential duty entry to numerous products imported into developed countries by eligible developing countries. The objective of this study is to examine the role of GSP in stimulating exports of developing countries. It also provides a comparative appraisal of the GSP schemes of the United States and Japan. The paper also makes certain recommendations to make GSP schemes more efficient and applicable to particular situations.

The European Union's Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) has existed for over 40 years and it aimed to promote the export growth in the developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the evolution and characteristics of the EU's GSP regime and examine the effectiveness of the EU's GSP in promoting the export growth of ten ASEAN beneficiary countries.

The authors analyse the trade flows between the EU and ASEAN beneficiary countries under the GSP scheme by referring to trade data (1990‐2007) at the aggregate level, the sectoral level and individual beneficiary country level.

The authors find that using the EU's GSP to promote the exports growth of the ASEAN countries has very limited effectiveness. Although the total EU imports from the ASEAN countries experienced a significant increase during the period 1990‐2007, the preferential imports under the GSP scheme remained stagnated at the same period. However, the least developed ASEAN members reported very high utilization rates and successfully exploited GSP preferences for pushing up their exports to the European market.

This work provides new evidence on whether the EU's GSP really works and to what extent the EU's GSP enhances the export growth of ASEAN beneficiary countries. The empirical findings may provide trade policymakers with some guidance in making EU trade policy.

The purpose of this paper is to determine if the institutional quality of developing countries (DCs) and least-developed countries (LDCs) contributes to a significant increase in the utilization rate of the Swiss generalized system of preferences in the agro-food sector.

The authors use state of the art regression techniques accounting for zero values to identify if the institutional quality – separately depicted by the Worldwide Governance Indicators, the Index of Economic Freedom and the Human Development Index – can contribute in overcoming non-tariff barriers (NTBs) to trade.

The institutional quality exerts a consistent positive effect on the level of utilization of trade preferences.

Swiss food trade represents, of course, only a very small share of world trade, therefore it would be worthwhile to extend the analysis to other countries and sectors.

Industrialized countries’ development policies should more strongly focus on capacity building in DCs and LDCs to strengthen trade-related institutions.

The study focuses on an often underemphasized element in international trade relations – the role of the institutional quality in overcoming NTBs to trade.

The aim of this paper is to critically analyse the trade preferences offered by the European Union (EU) to developing countries under the Cotonou Agreement and the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) in relation to trade in sugar. There is a need for a timely examination of this area, given the context of the ACP‐EU Economic Partnership Agreements and the recent termination of the ACP‐EU Sugar Protocol (SP).

The paper focuses on the Caribbean region as a whole with a particular focus on two non‐least developed ACP Caribbean countries, Guyana and Jamaica which held the largest sugar quotas among ACP Caribbean which benefited from the SP.

The EU trade regime changes have affected the value of the African‐Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) sugar trade regime and could have a serious impact on the amount of sugar available for purchase on the global market. The paper argues that ACP Caribbean countries could find more profitable to grow sugarcane as an agricultural commodity to produce biofuel, which is currently in high demand.

The analysis in this paper is limited to the arrangements pertaining to developing countries and therefore excludes those relating to least developed countries. Trade in more highly processed sugars such as fructose or glucose, together with the growing trade in biofuel refined from sugar beet and sugar cane are also outwith the scope of this discussion.

The paper deals with an intricate issue. It discusses the socio‐economic impact of the trade regime changes on the selected Caribbean countries and includes a section on recommendations given the economic weight of sugar for these countries.

Many studies have been carried on the effect of trade preferences, in particular from the viewpoint of lesser developed countries. There has been little focus on the importer, who has to consider their business strategy and the risk of non-compliance of legislation before obtaining preferences. One of the main issues is compliance with the country of origin rule by an importer wishing to access preferential tariffs. The chapter provides an insight into the issues facing importers and considers whether the preferences are being used to their full potential. It raises the question: Are importers choosing not to use the reduction of import tariffs in relation to preference due to its complexity? This study was carried out to highlight importers’ issues by interviewing senior management of eight European companies in relation to their approach to generalised system of preference (GSP). The results provide an interesting evaluation of the importers’ many dilemmas when choosing to use trade preferences.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of changes in the Generalized System of Preferences of the European Union, on the EU GSP imports from beneficiary countries in ASEAN and China, and Latin America, respectively, and the utilization of GSP benefits by these countries for the period 1994‐2007.

The econometric model specifications used is with unlagged and one year lagged reactions. GSP dummy variables are added in order to test whether the changes in the EU GSP has had impact on bilateral trade flows and the degree of utilization.

The paper finds that EU GSP agricultural imports are negatively affected by the changes in the EU GSP system, but these of industrial products seem to have positively reacted to changes in the EU GSP. For imports of textile products, the results are not significant. It is also found that ASEAN plus China are significantly benefiting more from the EU GSP for industrial and textile products than the Latin American countries, but the changes in the GSP had no significant different effect on both groups of countries. The authors estimations also show that the graduation mechanism in the EU GSP, against beneficiary countries with higher EU market shares, seems to be effective for industrial products, but in contrast, is working in favour of such countries for textile products. By and large, the other graduation mechanism in the EU GSP linking GSP benefits and level of development of the beneficiary country has not been effective.

The paper is the first to address the issue how the many changes in the EU GSP since 1994 have affected the exports and GSP utilization of beneficiary countries.

The purpose of this article is to provide empirical evidence about the potential positive effects of switching from given non-reciprocal trade preferences granted under the Swiss Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) for developing countries (DCs) to negotiated reciprocal trade preferences under a Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

In a case study of Tunisia’s exports to Switzerland, the authors apply methods of matching econometrics, namely, Propensity-Score Matching and Nearest-Neighbor Matching. Hereby, they are able to identify the average treatment effect on the treated.

Overall preferential exports increased by 125 per cent after the entry into force of the FTA in 2005 until the end of the observation period in 2011. Additionally, an analysis of the agro-food and textile sectors likewise indicate boosting preferential exports in the amount of 100 per cent.

Case studies in this vein have their disadvantages. The greatest disadvantage is the lack of generalization. In contrast to studies estimating the potential effects of an FTA for several countries, the authors are not able to generalize their results based on a single case.

Because trade preferences under the Swiss GSP are offered to the country group of DCs as a whole, non-reciprocal trade preferences are not tailored to the export structure of a particular DC. By switching from non-reciprocal to negotiated reciprocal trade preferences, DCs such as Tunisia expect to negotiate terms which are tailored to their export structure as well as better conditions than competitors from countries which are still beneficiaries of the GSP.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate explicitly the switch from non-reciprocal to reciprocal trade preferences using econometric matching techniques.

The effects of reductions in Canadian tariffs on imports from thirty non‐OPEC Third World countries are estimated using quarterly data for the period 1972–79. Estimates of total trade expansion, trade diversion and trade creation are obtained using linear and a log‐linear specification. The results imply that the trade diversion effect is in general and for most commodity groups larger than the trade creation effect.

At the heart of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) are substantial trade preferences, which coupled with the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) grant a wide range of goods produced in qualified African countries duty-free access to the USA. To be AGOA-eligible, countries are assessed annually on their progress in undertaking appropriate economic, institutional and human rights reforms. This paper seeks to cover new grounds by exploring whether exports of apparel to US crowds out EU-15's imports from Africa.

This paper employs the gravity model to gauge trade displacement effects from the EU to the US due to AGOA, and whether the more relaxed special waiver embodied in AGOA's apparel provision causes non-knitted exports to EU-15 to be crowded out. The basic gravity model, which posits that trade between two countries is positively influenced by the economic size and negatively affected by the distance between them, is augmented with other trade inhibiting and trade facilitating variables.

The gravity model provides no evidence of trade displacement but, instead, provides support for the hypothesis of complementarity of African exports to the two key markets. A strong positive impact of the bilateral trade between the US and Africa on the EU–African trade is evident mainly before the phasing out of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC). This paper finds that Special Rule beneficiaries' exports to the two markets still complement each other, but for every percentage increase in exports to the USA, there is a less than proportionate increase in exports to EU-15 indicating a higher utilisation of the special waiver. This paper also provides evidence for complementary apparel exports to both LDCs (least developing countries) and non-LDCs, with stronger effects on non-LDCs and the non-knitted sector.

Future work could consider the longer lifespan of AGOA following its latest renewal in 2015. This would allow one to also capture the ongoing changes in EU trade arrangements in particular implementation of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). This new agreement comes with more flexible rules of origin requiring single transformation step instead of the double step. As most African nations are still in the process of adopting EPAs, new research can shed more light on complementary or displacement effects once these agreements are adopted.

Since the main intent of AGOA is to enhance Africa's integration into the global economy by encouraging trade and investment, generate employment and increase productivity and per capita income growth, its impact on Special Rule beneficiaries' exports to the US has been extensively examined. However, the indirect effects of this trade agreement on African exports to other key markets providing similar preferences such as the EU has not been fully explored. This study also covers new grounds by examining whether there has been any apparel trade displacement from the EU to the US, as a result of the Act, over 2001–2016 period right from AGOA's inception.