In 1977 Sri Lanka was the first of the South Asian countries to decisively move away from the protectionist import-substitution trade policies that for many years had damaged their economic efficiency and hobbled their economic growth. Albeit with back-tracking episodes, Sri Lanka's liberalising...

In this paper, we examined back-and-forth international transactions through tariff reduction by estimating modified gravity equations for finished goods and intermediate goods separately. Our main findings are as follows. Exports of finished machinery products are negatively associated with not...

Two issues stand out in this conversation. The first concerns the unfinished business of the global fight against the scourge of poverty, which impacts one region more than most: Africa. At the same time, a key pre-requisite for economic performance - affordable and efficient public...

There is a stark contrast between the ambitious investment promotion efforts of many least developed countries (LDCs) and their often minimal commitments under the General Agreement on Trade in Service (GATS). At a time of urgent need to address domestic infrastructure and investment gaps, this...

We investigate to what extent the probability that a Specific Trade Concern (STC) is raised in the WTO against a Member in a given sector is affected by past reductions in applied tariffs. Employing an identification strategy based on 'new measures', we find evidence of a substitution of...

As the success of East Asian countries has shown, labor-intensive industry is recognized to lead economic growth in the early stages of development, utilizing relatively low labor costs. This same growth process has already started in South and South East Asian LDCs since the mid-1990s. However,...