Apparel is the largest labor-intensive manufacturing industry in South Asia, and is a major employer of women. Although South Asia's apparel sector benefits from many of the same favorable conditions as East Asia's, performance in South Asian apparel remains well below that of East Asia. The...

This paper studies how a positive export shock - the sharp increase in garment-sector exports that began at the end of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) - spread through Bangladesh's labor markets. Although the end of the MFA was arguably exogenous to Bangladesh, we instrument export demand with...

This paper studies how a positive export shock -- the sharp increase in garment-sector exports that began at the end of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) -- spread through Bangladesh's labor markets. Although the end of the MFA was arguably exogenous to Bangladesh, the authors instrument export...

Trade is a well-established driver of growth and poverty reduction.But changes in trade policy also have distributional impacts that create winners and losers. It is vital to understand and clearly communicate how trade affects economic well-being across all segments of the population, as well...

Are the wage gains from exports specific to exporting industries, or do they dissipate throughout the economy? In the language of trade theory, are the benefits from exporting industry specific or factor specific? To analyze this question, we study the case of Bangladesh. Bangladesh was the 4th...