Special and Differential Treatment for Developing Countries (SDT) constitutes a central feature of the GATT/WTO system. Its formal goal is to foster export-led growth in developing countries. Its theoretical foundations and empirical support are, however, weak at best. In particular, SDT...

This paper considers the possibility that economic liberalization, by which is meant a reduction in tariffs, quotas, capital controls, and other government distortions of international transactions, may reduce private savings rates. A two stage approach is used to analyze a panel data set...

We investigate how tariff liberalization has affected exporting in emerging countries. We use a highly disaggregated bilateral measure of market access to compare tariffs applied in 1996 and 2006, which includes the timing of the Uruguay Round and episodes of bilateral liberalization. Our...

This article presents a Ricardian model of trade with learning-by-doing to study the effect of barriers to trade in products with low growth potential on the long-run economic growth. The model shows that, when elasticity of demand for the product with a lower learning potential is lower than...

This paper develops a long-run growth model for a major oil exporting economy and derives conditions under which oil revenues are likely to have a lasting impact. This approach contrasts with the standard literature on the "Dutch disease" and the "resource curse", which primarily focuses on...

It is a well known fact that economic development and distance to the equator are positively correlated variables in the world today. It is perhaps less well known that as recently as 1500 C.E. it was the other way around. The present paper provides a theory of why the "latitude gradient"...

For the past two decades, studies measuring social preferences in developing settings have played an important role in building our understanding of economic development and poverty. This book chapter reviews lab-in-the-field experiments that measure social preferences, summarizes categories of...