What kind of technical assistance and capacity building benefits do developing countries enjoy if they sign a free trade agreement (FTA) with developed countries? This is a frequently asked question among developing country officials involved in FTA policymaking. While we tend to normatively...

Global institutions are understood as one of the best means of achieving inter-state cooperation. Yet this perspective omits the effects of institutional creation on non-members. We know that exclusion from trade agreements affects countries' economic cooperation. I show here that exclusion also...

Displacement is at a historic high, with over 65 million individuals currently displaced. The world is facing a refugee crisis that is unprecedented in scale. A large number of evaluations look at different aspects of programming in response to refugee crises in developing countries. This paper...

The data issued by the WTO Secretariat on disputes shows that "developing countries" have participated in one-third of the cases 1995-2005. The data should be corrected to exclude some OECD member countries and some others with high GDP per capita. These adjustments reduce by about 30 the number...

The United States of America and the People's Republic of China are engaged in a dispute about intellectual property protection and theft. Both states have imposed retaliatory tariffs on one another's exports. This paper considers how members of the World Trade Organization might collectively...

Civil war is often caused by poverty, and further demolishes existing capital. Such a vicious circle is detrimental for economic development of countries experiencing civil war. Civil war may also contribute to creative destructions of traditional economic, social and political system, leading...

Since the 9/11 attacks more attention has been given to the question why the United States is a major target for transnational terrorism. What conditions motivate these terrorist activities? Are there specific characteristics in the terrorists home countries that provide a breeding ground for...

The IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa) came into being in middle of 2003 with the meeting of the heads of Governments of the three countries on the sidelines of the Evian Summit. Since then the three countries have collaborated at times in the WTO multilateral negotiation forums. Another...

This paper explores the link between the prevalence of violent conflicts and extremely low female labor force participation rates (FLFPR) in South Asia. We merge Labor Force Surveys (LFSs) from Bangladesh, Sri-Lanka, India, and Pakistan to the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) to estimate the...

Hezbollah, a Shia Islamist political party and militant group based in Lebanon, is believed to receive a significant amount of informal funding from Iran. In this paper we evaluate whether this funding has had any economically meaningful effect on subnational development in Lebanon. Since the...