It is commonly argued that Japanese trade protection has enabled the nurturing and development internationally competitive firms. The results in our paper suggest that when it comes to TFP growth, this view of Japan is seriously erroneous. We find that lower tariffs and higher import volumes...

Taiwan was perhaps the first developing country to adopt an export-oriented trade strategy after World War II. The factors usually associated with big shifts in policy--a macroeconomic crisis, a change in political power or institutions, lobbying by export interests, pressure from international...

This paper highlights a tradeoff implied by a policy of export-led growth through currency undervaluation. While undervaluation can foster domestic manufacturing in countries like China by sustaining trade surplus, it also can harm a country's comparative advantage by altering the composition of...

Do trade reforms that significantly reduce import barriers lead to faster economic growth? In the two decades since Rodríguez and Rodrik's (2000) critical survey of empirical work on this question, new research has tried to overcome the various methodological problems that have plagued previous...

Many papers have explored the relationship between average tariff rates and economic growth, when theory suggests that the structure of protection is what should matter. We therefore explore the relationship between economic growth and agricultural tariffs, industrial tariffs, and revenue...

This paper identifies a causal effect of openness to international trade on growth. It does so by using tariff barriers of the United States as instruments for the openness of developing countries. Trade liberalization by a large trading partner causes an expansion in the trade of other...

The paper assesses the costs and benefits of active international reserve management (IRM), shedding light on the question of how intense should IRM be for an emerging market. In principle, an active IRM strategy could lower real exchange rate volatility induced by terms of trade shocks; provide...

Starting with Romer [1987] and Rivera-Batiz-Romer [1991] economists have been able to model how trade enhances growth through the creation and import of new varieties. In this framework, international trade increases economic output through two channels. First, trade raises productivity levels...

This paper presents assesses of the contribution of inward FDI to China's recent rapid economic growth using a two stage growth accounting approach. Recent econometric literature focuses on testing whether Chinese growth depends on inward FDI rather than measuring the contribution. Foreign...

For the past generation scholars have emphasized that the Lower South was one of the most economically successful regions of British mainland North America, and perhaps the most successful. Planters, the primary economic actors, made extensive use of slave labor and created a successful...