This paper analyzes the impacts of selected trade facilitation measures on international trade flows. A gravity model is used to estimate four equations: a pooled cross-section model; a fixed-effects model; a random effects model; and a Poisson maximum likelihood estimator. The contribution of...

This paper examines systematically the growth effects of trade integration in Sub-Saharan Africa. It complements and improves upon the empirical literature in two aspects: first, it jointly estimates the impact of different dimensions of trade integration, namely, trade volumes, export/trade...

This paper provides up-to-date characterization of the association between trade and GDP comovement -- also called the trade comovement slope -- for 150 countries from 1962 to 2011. The paper shows that trade is significantly linked to more GDP correlation, either directly through bilateral...

Since the Global Financial Crisis, world trade growth has been subdued and lagging slightly behind growth of gross domestic product. Trade is growing more slowly not only because growth of global gross domestic product is lower, but also because trade itself has become less responsive to gross...

In the 1990s the mainstream consensus was that trade causes growth. Subsequent research shed doubt on the consensus view, as evidence suggested that the identification of the effect of trade on growth was problematic in the existing literature. This paper contributes to this debate by focusing...

Traditional weighted-average measures of trade distortions are widely used in analyzing global and regional reforms, despite well-known deficiencies. This paper develops and applies optimal aggregators for the real-world case of multiple countries and commodities with much more detailed...

We determine how time delays affect international trade, using newly-collected World Bank data on the days it takes to move standard cargo from the factory gate to the ship in 126 countries. We estimate a modified gravity equation, controlling for endogeneity and remoteness. On average, each...

This paper analyzes the role of the United States in the global economy and examines the extent of global spillovers from changes in U.S. growth, monetary and fiscal policies, and uncertainty in its financial markets and economic policies. Developments in the U.S. economy, the world's largest,...

After investment, exports and imports are the most volatile components of aggregate demand within countries. Moreover, the volatility of growth and the volatility of trade flows tend to move together; they declined from the 1990s until 2009, followed by an increase since 2009. This paper...

This paper, based on the introductory remarks made at the two-day conference on "The State of the Economy, the State of the World," is an idiosyncratic stocktaking of the trajectory of economics from Adam Smith to contemporary times, with special attention to the rise of development economics....