In thinking about policy, academic economists alternate between theoretical models in which governments can design finely-tuned optimal interventions and practical considerations which usually assume the government to be incompetent and hostage to special interests. I argue in this paper that...

This study focuses on the role of trade and trade policy in achieving sustained long-term growth in Africa. One major conclusion is that trade policy in Sub-Saharan Africa works much the same way that it does elsewhere. High levels of trade restrictions have been an important obstacle to exports...

Do countries with lower policy-induced barriers to international trade grow faster, once other relevant country characteristics are controlled for? There exists a large empirical literature providing an affirmative answer to this question. We argue that methodological problems with the empirical...

The export booms in South Korea and Taiwan starting in the early 1960s are anomalous when compared with later export booms in other, non-East Asian countries such as Chile and Turkey. First, these booms have taken place in the context of comparatively small changes in relative prices in favor of...

Despite the well-known gains from trade, trade liberalization is politically one of the most contentious actions that a government can take. We propose and formalize a new argument, having to do with uncertainty, which is complementary to the usual explanations for why that is the case; many...

The question addressed in this paper is whether the gap in performance between the developed and developing worlds can continue, and in particular, whether developing nations can sustain the rapid growth they have experienced of late. The good news is that growth in the developing world should...