This paper evaluates a possible US-SACU (Southern African Customs Union) free trade agreement as part of a US approach to new preferential trade agreements characterized by the term competitive liberalization.' This is the idea that competition among large countries (US/EU) to negotiate...

Does democracy promote economic development? We review recent attempts to address this question, which exploit the within-country variation associated with historical transitions in and out of democracy. The answer is positive, but depends -- in a subtle way -- on the details of democratic...

Beginning in 1979 with the newly electted Thatcher Government and continuing under successive Conservative and Labour Governments, the United Kingdom has embarked on a two-decade-long experiment in economic reform. We present evidence that the reform process has succeeded in making the UK more...

Unilateral tariff liberalisation by developing nations is pervasive but our understanding of it is shallow. This paper strives to partly redress this lacuna on the theory side by introducing three novel political economy mechanisms with particular emphasis is on the role of production...

Despite several theoretical contributions and considerable informal empirical evidence" to the contrary, a notion that trade and investment are substitutes persists in trade policy" analysis. This paper considers the liberalization of commodity trade versus liberalization" allowing direct...

This paper analyzes the equilibrium degree of protection as the outcome of the interaction of demands for protection and the demand for a liberal international trading order. It then assesses the current balance. On one hand, the nature of technical progress, the institution of the Uruguay...