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Barriers, especially non‐tariff barriers (NTBs), have been shown to have an important impact upon international trade in services. Foreign direct investment and market entry strategy theory do not adequately address the importance of NTBs in the decision‐making process. Previous studies indicate that service firms need to establish local presence to be successful in a foreign market. Where firms are unable to enter a market because it is blocked by trade barriers, some researchers suggest managers engage in specific entry strategies or strategic actions to overcome barriers. This study, based on in‐depth interviews with insurance executives, shows that trade barriers are one of several factors managers evaluate when deciding whether to enter a market. However, barriers can become a critical factor if they create prohibitive costs or difficulties. Based on the findings, this study proposes a new model of market entry decision making which hypothesizes that barriers can become a go/no‐go decision factor.

Free trade agreements have been employed, either unilaterally or as a bloc, as an instrument to overcome the inefficiencies in trade brought about by the prevailing barriers and regulatory measures. During the tenth summit the leaders of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed to integrate their priority sectors with a vision to developing an ASEAN economic community whereby there would be a free flow of goods, services, investment and a freer flow of capital, equitable economic development, and reduced poverty and socio‐economic disparities. This market would have no price discrimination for commodities and against foreign goods, services, capital and labor. The purpose of this paper is to assess the current state of the cross‐border trade in logistics services among ASEAN. The extent of the ease of cross‐border trade is measured in terms of trade friendliness. The trade friendliness is a measure of the openness of ASEAN towards conducting free cross‐border trade.

This study uses a series of semi‐structured interviews with 35 logistics and related firms operating in ASEAN.

It was found that the unwieldy customs procedures and inspections, lack of coordination, and arbitrary rulings are some barriers to freer cross‐border trade within ASEAN.

In this paper, the authors have identified several barriers that influence logistics services across ASEAN. ASEAN must address these barriers before any further attempt of freer trade can be made.

Studies have been conducted for the USA and Europe but not for the Asia‐Pacific. The Asia‐Pacific is a growing region for global trade and therefore assessing the trade openness or friendliness in the logistics sector is useful for taking further policy initiatives for developing an ASEAN economic community.

In a supply-constrained region like Asia, promoting exports has always been a challenge particularly at a time when Asia’s trade has been severely affected by lack of external demand. This paper argues that price barriers have taken a new shape during the global financial crisis period which may generate differential impacts on trade flows as we proceed toward recovery. The size and shape of price barriers would be higher if NTBs, applied by the countries during the crisis period, were counted. One of the conclusions of this paper is that ‘price’ barrier is still more important than ‘non-price’ barrier in enhancing Asia’s trade and integration. The higher the price barrier between countries in a pair, the less they trade. In other words, a 10 percent increase in the ad-valorem price (transport and tariff) lowered trade by 6 percent. Tariff and transport costs, each considered separately, also influence the trade flow in the same direction, to more or less the same extent. There are indications of huge domestic infrastructure bottlenecks in countries in Asia. Based on direct and indirect evidence related to trade barriers, this paper concludes that complementary trade policies focusing on price and non-price barriers have immense importance in enhancing international trade and integration in the post-crisis period.

This paper aims to propose a procedure to remove international trade barriers globally. Trade is confronting various barriers in the present world, and this is due to the policies of governments to protect interests of their own citizens. Experience shows that trade barriers end up with incurring losses for both sides (traders) in practice, but a look at history of polemics on trade barriers removal in World Trade Organization (WTO) shows that countries are unable to overcome the obstacles they have created. Trade partners understand that removal of counter barriers is advantageous for both parties. In the meantime, being concerned of other party’s response impedes the benefits of free trade for all parties.

This proposition is based upon Islamic Sufism teachings. The propounded principles and goals are in accordance with high understanding of social and economic subtleties of humankind’s life. The authors try to form and formalize Islamic Sufi teachings to establish a base for compiling new international convention that facilitates international trade in all aspects.

To facilitate and promote international trade relations in short run, interested countries may accept a convention to remove all trade barriers among themselves all at once.

The proposed convention does not go against General Agreement on Tariff and Trade and WTO, but it is complementary to both.

The proposed principles are actually shortcuts to what WTO may access in far futures.

Islamic Sufism teachings can lead us to solve current international problems.

WTO has taken important steps to facilitate international trade. To reach the main goal of trade liberalization of WTO, a shortcut solution is proposed here.

The purpose of this paper is to simulate the effects of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) on trade and income, with a particular interest in the effect on China and Korea.

This paper adopts a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model developed by Li et al. (2017) to simulate the effect of RCEP. The CGE model is grounded in the firm heterogeneity theory. Within this framework, the feature of dynamic movements of firms allows the CGE model to capture the extensive margin of trade increase. Aside from that, the CGE model separates foreign direct investment (FDI) from domestic investment, which helps to explain the effect of the removal of FDI barriers.

Results show that RCEP will increase trade of China by 1.5 percent. The income of China will increase by 2.5 percent. The trade increase of Korea will be $8bn, and its income will increase by 0.6 percent. In terms of welfare, China will gain $214bn and Korea will gain $23~35bn, taking 2~3 percent of Korea’s GDP. Also, the reduction of behind-the-border barriers presents very significant effects.

The main contribution of this paper is to quantitatively assess the potential effects of RCEP on trade and income. The positive findings would propel RCEP parties, especially China and Korea, to reach an agreement as soon as possible.

Most current modeling approaches identify very small gains from trade reform. In this chapter, we examine recent developments in the literature to assess whether standard modeling approaches are mis-specifying, understating, or overstating the gains from trade reform. Key areas where the impacts of trade barrier reduction appear to be understated include the measurement of barriers; the aggregation of these barriers; process productivity gains, particularly those resulting from reallocation of resources between firms; product quality improvements and expansion of product variety; factor supply; and investment of gains from trade.

This paper aims to investigate the difference between the impacts of indicators of trade barriers (TBs) on bankrupt enterprises (BEs), new enterprises (NEs) and other enterprises (OEs).

The paper has used a multiple-step approach. At the first stage, the initial data has been collected from interviews with 164 top managers of SMEs in West Azerbaijan in Iran during two periods of 2013–2015 and 2017–2019. At the second step, multiple correspondence analysis has been used to summarize the relationships between variables and construct indices for different groups of TBs. Finally, the generalized structural equation model method was used to examine the impact of export barriers.

The results showed that the political legal index is the main TBs for BEs and NEs, but it had a more significant impact on BEs; the financial index was the second major TBs factor for BEs, while OEs did not have a problem in performance index, and the financial index was classified as a minor obstacle for them. All indicators of marketing barriers (except production index) had a negative and significant effect on all enterprises; the most important TBs for NEs was the information index.

The results indicated that if enterprises have a strong financial system and function, they can lessen the impact of sanctions and keep themselves in the market.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of this chapter is to benchmark Tunisia against other emerging economies in terms of the regulatory barriers affecting particular services sectors and to assess the economy-wide effects of further liberalizing these services trade restrictions, compared with reducing the dispersion in barriers to its merchandise trade. On the basis of a rather restricted sample of services sectors, partial regulatory reform would yield gains roughly equivalent to full unilateral reform of manufacturing tariffs, but roughly one-tenth the gains from full bilateral reform of border protection in agriculture with the European Union. The adjustment costs associated with these services trade reforms would be minimal. The chapter identifies the reasons why the gains from these services reforms are relatively small and argues that a wider set of reforms could provide win-win outcomes and even fewer adjustment costs. By contrast, the gains in agriculture and manufacturing tend to come at the expense of domestic output in the reforming sectors – the gains are greater, but so too are the adjustment costs.

This study aims to integrate both internal and external factors to examine the effect of innovation and perceived trade barriers on firms’ export activity. In particular, the authors expand the scope of innovation into both technological (product and process) and non-technological (marketing and management) innovation. Furthermore, the authors examine the potential joint effect of perceived customs and trade barriers on firms.

The authors empirically test the hypotheses by using firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey during the most recent year available for each ASEAN country, together with both firm- and country-level controls from various data sources. Specifically, the final sample for analysis includes 3,602 firms from Cambodia (100), Indonesia (1157), Laos (99), Malaysia (445), the Philippines (719), Thailand (572) and Vietnam (510).

First, the results show that firm-specific innovation capabilities (including non-technological of managerial innovation) do matter for explaining export propensity. Furthermore, in contexts in which location-bound advantages are prevalent, the effects of innovation may disappear and further deteriorate performance in the post-entry stage. Second, the findings support the notion regarding the prevalence of country- over firm-specific advantages for the international expansion of companies from ASEAN countries. More specifically, this study holds that innovation does not matter for export intensity and that factors related to the location’s institutions appear to be more important.

First, it acknowledges and examines the effect of not only technological innovation, but also non-technological innovation on export intention. Second, the paper measures the institutional effect at the firm level, rather than as a country-specific factor, to better understand the combined effect of internal and external variables on firms’ export strategy. Furthermore, it performs a cross-country analysis while controlling for other confounding firm and macro factors. Third, the authors test the model on both pre-entry (export propensity) and post-entry (export intensity) stages. Finally, the study responds to calls for research that examines the international competitive advantages of firms from ASEAN countries.