The majority of African countries implemented import liberalisation in the 1990s. This paper explores factors that may explain the pattern of protection and of tariff reform. We consider political economy explanations, motivated specifically by the Grossman and Helpman (1994) model of protection...

In the 1980’s and 1990’s many African countries liberalised their trade policy, although since the mid 1990s there are countries that did not alter tariffs. This allows us to analyse the effects of trade liberalisation on the change in imports using Difference-in-Differences techniques that...

Measures to actively facilitate trade are increasingly seen as essential to assist developing countries in expanding trade and benefiting from globalisation. Although often viewed as narrowly concerned with the ease and speed of Customs procedures, even greater trade cost reductions and trade...

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in the relationships between income inequality and growth, trade policy and growth, and growth and poverty. We contribute to this literature by exploring the relationships between inequality, trade liberalisation, growth and poverty in a sample of...

The Ugandan economy has been transformed since 1987. We ask how effective have the reforms been in increasing the incentives to exporters. Uganda has made significant progress in reducing the anti-export bias in its trade policy. Taxes on exports have been abolished, the foreign exchange market...

This paper evaluates the impact on Uganda of the liberalisation of world trade, especially in agricultural commodities, as proposed in the Uruguay Round. We can draw three broad conclusions. First, the impact of multilateral liberalisation on a low-income country such as Uganda appears to be...