Regional trade arrangements (RTAs) in Africa have been ineffective in promoting trade and foreign direct investment. Relatively high external trade barriers and low resource complementarity between member countries limit both intra- and extraregional trade. Small market size, poor transport...

South-South trade agreements are proliferating: Developing countries signed 70 new agreements between 1990 and 2003. Yet the impact of these agreements is largely unknown. This paper focuses on the static effects of South-South preferential trade agreements stemming from changes in trade...

With China's accession to the WTO in 2001, Russia is by far that organization's most prominent nonmember. This paper applies the gravity model to gauge whether this "outsider" status has been affecting Russia's export structure. On the basis of cross-section and panel regressions for 1995-2002,...

This paper measures the extent to which South African economic growth is an engine of growth in sub-Saharan Africa. Results based on panel data estimation for 47 African countries over four decades suggest that South African growth has a substantial positive impact on growth in the rest of...

Spain has experienced income convergence consistently in the past decade, despite gradual losses in competitiveness. The empirical evidence indicates that overall EU enlargement offers a range of opportunities for Spain, points to potential pressures in specific sectors, and offers challenges,...

How do signatures required for exporting and business registration procedures affect the volume and composition of country's exports? To answer this question, I develop a model where a country can export two types of products: differentiated and homogeneous. I show that export signatures and...

This paper examines the role of Japan against that of China in the exchange rate regime in East Asia in light of growing interest in forming a currency union in the region. The analysis suggests that currency unions with China tend to generate higher average welfare gains for East Asian...

The literature measuring the impact of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTA) and WTO membership on trade flows has produced remarkably diverse results. Rose's (2004) seminal paper reports a range of specifications that show no WTO effects, but Subramanian and Wei (2007) contend that he does not...