The future development of the Tajik economy will be shaped by its comparative advantage on world markets. Exploiting comparative advantage enables an economy to reap gains from trade. Tajikistan's most important comparative advantage is its hydropower potential, which is far larger than the...

Eurasian cities, unique in the global spatial landscape, were part of the world's largest experiment in urban development. The challenges they now face because of their history offer valuable lessons to urban planners and policymakers across the world from places that are still urbanizing to...

This paper analyzes and reconciles macro and micro evidence on savings and factors that affect savings, as well as possible policy implications. At the aggregate level, the main question is how savings are affected by growth and macroeconomic policies and variables (fiscal policy, exchange rate,...

Since the early 1980s, Turkey has been going through a rapid urbanization process at a pace beyond the World average. This paper aims at assessing the impact of this rapid urbanization process on the country's sector productivity. The authors built a database combining two-digit manufacturing...

Many recent papers have pointed to ambiguous trade effects of developing regional trade agreements (RTAs), calling for a reassessment of their economic merits. The author focuses on seven such agreements currently in force in Sub-Saharan Africa (ECOWAS and SADC), Asia (AFTA and SAPTA) and Latin...

The African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) and Everything But Arms (EBA), two preferential agreements extended by the United States (AGOA) and the European Union (EU) (EBA) to some developing countries seem to have contributed somewhat to boost Sub-Saharan Africa's exports since 2001. However,...

Africa represents a small share of global production and trade, while hosting half of the extreme poor worldwide. To catch up with the rest of the world, there is no alternative: the continent needs to link its production and trade to the global economy to take advantage of unlimited demand and...