This paper aims to assess the role of instabilities on Africa low rates of growth during the seventies and eighties, using cross-section econometric estimates, on a sample of African and non African countries and two pooled decades. Africa exhibits higher "primary" instabilities (climatic, terms...

This paper reports panel gravity estimates of aggregate bilateral trade for 130 countries over the period 1962-96 in which the coefficient of distance is allowed to change over time. In a standard specification in which transport costs are proxied by distance only, it is found paradoxically that...

This paper aims to assess the role of instabilities on Africa low rates of growth during the seventies and eighties, using cross-section econometric estimates, on a sample of African and non African countries and two pooled decades. Africa exhibits higher "primary" instabilities (climatic, terms...

We oppose two concepts of trade globalization : (1) the increase of the countries trade to GDP ratio ("globalization-integration"), (2) the alleviation of related to distance obstacles to trade ("geographical globalization"). We choose as a criterion of a possible geographical globalization the...