Should the China-U.S. trade agreement prompt relief because it averts a damaging trade war or concern because selective preferential access for the United States to China's markets breaks multilateral rules against discrimination? The answer depends on how China implements the agreement....

This paper analyzes the impact of Covid-19 and uncooperative trade policies on world food markets. It quantifies the initial shock due to the pandemic under the assumption that products that are more labor intensive in production are more affected through workers' morbidity and containment...

This paper presents new high-frequency data on trade policy changes targeting medical and food products since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, documenting how countries used trade policy instruments in response to the health crisis on a week-by-week basis. The data set reveals a rapid...

This paper reviews the determinants of Latin America's uneven growth based on an accounting decomposition that breaks down countries' growth (relative to the world) into three trade-related channels: (i) an export pull measuring the traction exerted by the country's exports, (ii) an external...

This paper explores the sovereign-bank nexus in emerging markets and developing economies: the interconnectedness between the health of the sovereign and the banking system. Data from 140 emerging markets and developing economies suggest that this nexus is rising. First, banks have increased...

Emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) weathered the 2009 global recession relatively well. However, the impact of the global recession varied across economies. EMDEs with stronger pre-crisis fundamentals - such as large foreign exchange reserves, sound fiscal positions, and low...

There are currently 31 countries classified as low income, less than half the number in 2001. Rapid growth in low-income countries from 2001 to 2018 allowed many to progress to middle-income status, supported by the commodity price boom of 2001-11, debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor...

The landlocked and fragile countries Mali, Niger, and Chad have suffered, to varying degrees, from Dutch Disease, with high export concentration in natural resource commodities and in a few foreign markets, and little development of their non-resource economies. The three countries' ability to...

This paper attempts to quantify the impact of economic policy uncertainty on overall trade and trade linked to global value chains. Using new data on policy uncertainty for 18 countries and 24 years, it finds a statistically significant negative impact of policy uncertainty on overall trade...

This paper identifies the effect of trade policy on market power through new data and a new identification strategy. It uses a large data set containing export values and quantities by product and destination for all exporting firms in 12 developing and emerging countries over several years,...