Recent and ongoing agreements to liberalize trade between the European Union (EU) and Arab countries raises the question as to how the latter will fare in a more competitive environment. This paper uses the Grubel-Lloyd intra-industry trade (IIT) index as an indicator of the degree of industrial...

This paper reviews a selection of studies on privatization experiences in transition countries. Empirical studies almost invariably show privatized enterprises outperform state enterprises. Moreover, the literature identifies de novo firms as being clearly the best performers, followed by...

This paper looks at the progress in transition and the geographic diversification of trade, focusing on two issues--the degree of trade openness and trade integration--for a sample of countries in transition. It concludes that about half of the group of countries sampled are becoming as open as...