Rwanda has made much progress towards integrating into the world economy, with yearly export growth rates close to 20%. However, largely because of being landlocked, Rwanda is still isolated from many trading partners and, because of the low share of trade in GDP, exports do not contribute much...

At the Davos forum of January 2014, a group of 14 countries pledged to launch negotiations on liberalising trade in ‘green goods’ (also known as`environmental goods’(EGs)), focussing on the elimination of tariffs for an ‘APEC list’ of 54 products. The paper shows that the ‘Davos...

Political motives, geography, and the uneven distribution of gains trumped the traditional efficiency gains across Africa’s Regional Economic Communities (RECs). The small, sparsely populated, fragmented, and often isolated economies across Africa make a compelling case for these economies to...

Political motives, geography, and the uneven distribution of gains trumped the traditional efficiency gains across Africa’s Regional Economic Communities (RECs). The small, sparsely populated, fragmented, and often isolated economies across Africa make a compelling case for these economies to...

The “distance effect” measuring the elasticity of trade flows to distance has been found to be rising since the early 1970s in a host of studies based on the gravity model, leading observers to call it the “distance puzzle”. However, this puzzle is regularly challenged by new...

The outcome of the 15th conference of the Parties to the UNFCC showed a shift from a top-down approach with a collective target favoring environmental objectives to a bottom-up accord favoring political feasibility, with no meaningful binding agreement in sight, as the global climate regime and...

This paper revisits the celebrated conflict that lasted close to two decades and pitted the EU against the US and against MFN suppliers of bananas. It starts by recalling the major turning points in the dispute and argues that the EU-US conflict could largely be explained by the changing...

Using an “event analysis”, this paper complements the cross-country approach to the study of fiscal correlates of growth. Data on fiscal expenditures and growth for a database of 140 countries (118 developing countries) over 1972-2005 are reorganized around turning points providing a summary...

The outcome of the 15th conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in Copenhagen showed a shift from a top-down approach with a collective target favoring environmental objectives to a bottom-up accord favoring political feasibility. There is no meaningful binding agreement in sight, also because...

In spite of improved performance during the last decade, the MENA region has had a disappointing performance compared to other middle income countries. The paper surveys underlying causes by constructing micro and macro indicators and comparing performance with other countries. Lower growth and...