Trade Preference Erosion

BERNARD HOEKMAN is Senior Advisor in the Development Research Group of the World Bank, and manages the Bank's research program on trade and international integration. His research focuses on the functioning of the multilateral trading system, trade in services, preferential trade agreements and channels of international technology diffusion. Between 1988 and 1993 he worked as a research economist in the GATT Secretariat in Geneva. He is a graduate of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan and is a Research Fellow of the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research.

WILL MARTIN is a Lead Economist in the World Banks Development Research Group. He specializes in analysis of trade policy reforms in developing countries, with an emphasis on reforms related to the WTO, and a primary regional focus on East and South Asia. He has written extensively on policy reforms in agricultural trade, textiles and clothing, and non-agricultural trade generally. He has a particular interest in using detailed data on trade barriers to build up a complete picture of the effects of trade barriers on trade and welfare. He has published widely in journals, and books, including recent studies of global trade reform, implications of food prices for poverty, and of Chinas accession to the WTO.

CARLOS ALBERTO PRIMO BRAGA is currently Director, Economic Policy and Debt Department, The World Bank. He has written extensively on topics such as the multilateral trade system, regional trade agreements, intellectual property rights, information technology and development, and services liberalization. From 2003 to 2006, he was the Senior Adviser of the World Bank's International Trade Department. Based in Geneva, he was responsible for covering international trade issues vis-à-vis European-based institutions, including the WTO. He is a graduate from the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (Mechanical Engineering) and the University of São Paulo (MA, Economics), Brazil, and holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.