Development accounting shows that a significant part of cross-country income differences is attributed to differences in total factor productivity (TFP), but the sources of TFP differences are not well understood. This paper considers the role of international trade to explain cross-country...

Almost 80 percent of capital goods production in the world is concentrated in 10 countries. Poor countries import most of their capital goods. We argue that international trade in capital goods has quantitatively important effects on economic development through two channels: (i) capital...

The foreign trade policies of the industrialized countries have become increasingly complex. The states in question do not apply uniform policies to all other countries but operate different arrangements for different groups of countries. The divergencies can be easily adduced as evidence in...

This paper, produced for the Commonwealth Secretariat, asks what climate change means for the competitiveness of African LDCs' export trade. It first surveys the export profiles of African LDCs, then surveys what we know about climate change's physical impacts in Africa, as well as considering...

Does competition enhance productivity growth of a developing economy? Is global competition conducive to economic development? Especially, does competition with more advanced producers in the global market promote productivity growth of domestic producers in a developing country? If the answer...

How does international trade affect structural transformation in developing countries? We use data on sectoral allocation of labour and value-added in 46 developing economies over the period 1995-2017 and exploit for identification plausibly exogenous variation in manufacturing imports from...

The growing importance of Japan on the world market has brought with it changes in the international division of labour and a shift in the focus of the expansion in world trade away from the EC and the USA. What factors determine the shares of the EC, the USA and Japan in international trade?...