This paper studies the value of external commitment to policy reforms in the case of WTO/GATT accessions. The accessions often entail reforms that go beyond narrowly defined trade liberalization, and have to overcome fierce resistance in the acceding countries, as reflected in protracted...

While new conventional wisdom warns that developing countries should be aware of the risks of premature capital account liberalization, the costs of not removing exchange controls have received much less attention. This paper investigates the negative effects of exchange controls on trade. To...

This paper argues that the pursuit of special and differential treatments (SDT) by developing countries has hampered the liberalization of global service trade, which is one of the causes of the only slowing improving of service efficiency globally. We use value added per worker as a proxy of...

Trade reform conditions are common in IMF supported programs. Of the 99 countries that had IMF programs during 1993-2003, 77 had conditions on trade reforms in their programs. Since the WTO has not been found especially effective in promoting trade openness for most developing countries, it is...

This paper discusses the potential impacts of services trade liberalization on developing countries and reviews existing quantitative studies. Its purpose is to distill themes from current literature rather than to advocate specific policy changes. The picture emerging is one of valiant attempts...

This paper both documents the involvement of developing countries in coalitional activity in the current GATT Uruguay round thus far, and provides a rudimenting evaluation of the pros and cons of the different options for them as far as coalitional strategies are concerned. The main conclusions...

This paper documents recent external sector liberalization in developing countries, evaluates what is behind it, and assesses whether it is likely to persist, accelerate or reverse itself. It draws heavily upon material collected during a recent Ford Foundation-supported research project on...