Do trade reforms that significantly reduce import barriers lead to faster economic growth? In the two decades since the critical survey of empirical work on this question by Francesco Rodriguez and Dani Rodrik in 2000, new research has tried to overcome the various methodological problems that...

In 1960, South Korea’s exports were about 1 percent of GDP, and the country’s ability to import depended almost entirely on US aid. After changing its foreign exchange and trade policies in the mid-1960s, Korea saw a surge in exports to more than 10 percent of GDP by the end of the decade....

Taiwan was 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...

The 1980s and 1990s saw a policy revolution in developing countries in which many highly protected (if not closed) economies were opened to world trade. These reforms were largely undertaken unilaterally, but international economic institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary...

In the 1950s, many economists believed that import substitution — policies to restrict imports of manufactured goods — was the best trade strategy to promote industrialization and economic growth in developing countries. By the mid-1960s, however, there was widespread disenchantment with the...