Creativity and innovation play increasingly important roles in modern societies. In both developed and developing countries alike, artistic, scientific and economic creativity accounts for significant portions of GPD and trade in creative goods is an increasingly important contributor to global trade flows.

Access to medicines at prices patients can afford has been a recurrent concern for the global community ever since the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) was adopted in 1995 as one of the agreements under the World Trade Organization (WTO).

This paper uses new data from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and its partners, including the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), to track the importance of trade within global value chains in East Asia and Latin America. The analysis shows that while value chain trade is important within the overall trade landscape, it takes place to a significant extent within a traditional paradigm in which Latin America most often supplies raw materials, and East Asia supplies manufactured goods.

The world and regional economies have been hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis. The combined effects of the pandemic and global and national lockdowns have caused havoc in the countries of South and South-West Asia (SSWA), with their trade severely impacted. This paper investigates the subregion’s experience implementing trade facilitation measures in the times of COVID-19. The paper indicates that the SSWA countries have achieved remarkable progress in trade facilitation, especially as the COVID-19 crisis progressed.

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated attempts to contain its spread have created unprecedented hurdles to international trade. This paper reviews trade facilitation measures implemented in North and Central Asia (NCA), including transport and trade finance facilitation. All NCA countries have sought to protect the public health by restricting movement of people (including across borders) and applying special sanitary regulations at border crossings. These have included requirements to sanitize trucks, protect customs officials, change drivers, and requiring COVID-19 tests from drivers.

The COVID-19 pandemic is considered the most serious health crisis and the greatest challenge to humankind since the Second World War. Although countries in East and North-East Asia (ENEA) were the first to be hit by COVID-19, they have so far been successful in controlling the outbreak with relatively low fatalities, partially thanks to various containment measures.

This paper explores the kinds of demands governments in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) could and should be formulating and submitting in the context of the ecommerce negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as well as any current or proposed Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) they are engaged in with advanced industrialized countries.

This study analyses the relationship between non-tariff measures (NTMs) applicable in the agricultural sector of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as newer members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), first established by Belarus, Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation in 2010, have the intention of eliminating intra-block barriers in the trade of goods, services, capital and labour.

This paper examines recent technological developments and how they could impact efforts by policymakers and political leaders in developing countries to harness trade and investment liberalization to achieve economic development outcomes.