At a moment when a global effort to pursue a development-oriented trade round seems to have stalled, some of the largest economies in international trade have turned their attentions to regional accords. The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership cover...

The existing literature on determinants of migration flows typically claims that income differences across countries should be a pushing factor for people's movement. We suggest that institutional quality is a better proxy for the factors that trigger migration. People may well want to stay in...

The World Trade Organization's (WTO) most recent Ministerial Conference took place last December in Nairobi, Kenya. Opinions vary on how much was achieved, and, perhaps more importantly, where the WTO goes from here. The United States and the European Union have emphasized that “new” issues...

The music world has had its share of Internet-led shake-ups. Digital piracy and the advertisement rules of platforms like YouTube are major concerns. But there are also opportunities: online marketing, arts education, cultural awareness, and nation branding are particularly notable. How can...

This paper documents patterns in international trade costs in processed foods for a large cross-section of developing and developed countries, during the 1976-2000 period. A trade costs index is inferred from a micro-founded gravity equation that incorporates bilateral 'iceberg' trade costs. For...

There is clear evidence that existing preferential schemes contributed significantly to boosting LDC exports. Many seem to believe the multilateral trading system could offer little to LDCs as they have already obtained market access to critical markets under the current preferential schemes....

This paper presents a detailed 2019 Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Benin as a basis for policy analysis with a focus on agriculture, food processing and energy generation from byproducts. It is based on official statistics collected from national and international institutions (national...

In principle, firms in developing countries benefit from the fact that advanced technologies and products have already been developed in industrialized countries and can simply be adopted, a process often referred to as industrial upgrading. But for many firms this advantage remains elusive....

While new conventional wisdom warns that developing countries should be aware of the risks of premature capital account liberalization, the costs of not removing exchange controls have received much less attention. This paper investigates the negative effects of exchange controls on trade. To...