This paper estimates worker, firm and assistance programs' responses to foreign shocks in Brazil exploiting quasi-experimental variation in firms’ foreign demand resulting from the Global Financial Crisis. It shows these transitory shocks have permanent effects in a setting characterized by a...

A 2021-22 survey of trade promotion organizations conducted by the World Bank to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic affected their functioning suggests four main findings. First, trade promotion organizations in high-income countries are larger than those in low-income countries, suggesting a...

Countries with greater commodity export intensity have more concentrated markets for imported goods. Within countries over time, import market concentration is associated with higher domestic prices, suggesting that markups due to greater concentration outweigh any potential cost efficiency....

Quality regulation has become the dominant instrument of trade policy. Panel evidence shows that regulations classified as sanitary and phytosanitary measures and technical barriers to trade both increase trade on average. Other non-tariff measures like quotas decrease trade. Sanitary and...

This paper quantifies the value of fertilizer for agricultural production and trade in a developing economy where agriculture is centrally important by using an unprecedented natural experiment whereby the government of Sri Lanka imposed an abrupt and unexpected ban on the imports of all...

To identify transactions at risk of tariff evasion, this paper matches export transaction data from France with import transaction data from Madagascar using container identifiers. Reporting discrepancies between exporters and importers are prevalent but small, with over two-fifths of importers...