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...

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...

There is a large body of evidence indicating that cross-country differences in income levels are associated with differences in productivity. If workers are much more productive in one country than in another, restrictions on immigration lead to large efficiency losses. The paper quantifies...

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...

Rugged individualism--the combination of individualism and anti-statism--is a prominent feature of American culture with deep roots in the country's history of frontier settlement. Today, rugged individualism is more prevalent in counties with greater total frontier experience (TFE) during the...

While the economies of the fifteen countries that were in the European Union (EU15) in 2000 will continue to grow from now until 2040, they will not be able to match the surges in growth that will occur in South and East Asia. In 2040, the Chinese economy will reach $123 trillion, or nearly...