On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the WTO, this paper re-estimates the impact of WTO accession on growth. Joining the multilateral trading system not only expands access to international markets but also requires commitment to domestic reforms. Tang and Wei (2009) showed that there is...

As we can understand with the spread of GVCs, a lot of new questions emerge regarding the measurement of participation and positioning in the globalised production process. The World Development Report (WDR) 2020 explains the GVC phenomenon and then focus on participation and the prospects...

Could foreign direct investment (FDI) contribute to improving developing countries' participation in global value chains (GVC)? This is the main issue addressed in this paper. Indeed, FDI seems to be, at least theoretically, a mean to speed up developing countries' participation in GVCs in a...

To study how financial development depends on trade openness and different types of institutions, we present a political economy model in which the elite can repress the financial market at some cost. The elite can persuade the government to set an interest rate ceiling, and it can then channel...

An endogenous growth model is developed demonstrating both static and dynamic gains from trade for developing nations due to the beneficial effects of trade on imitation and technological diffusion. The concept of learning-to-learn in both imitative and innovative processes is incorporated into...

This paper studies the value of external commitment to policy reforms in the case of WTO/GATT accessions. The accessions often entail reforms that go beyond narrowly defined trade liberalization, and have to overcome fierce resistance in the acceding countries, as reflected in protracted...

More than 170 years ago, Frédéric Bastiat noted in his masterly work Economic Sophisms that the “opposition to free trade rests upon errors, or, if you prefer, upon half-truths.”1 Ever since Adam Smith successfully replaced mercantilist orthodoxy with free trade doctrine in his celebrated...

This paper revisits the empirical evidence on the relationship between economic integration and economic growth. First, we present an updated dataset of openness indicators and trade liberalization dates for a wide cross-section of countries in the 1990s. Second, we extend the Sachs and Warner...

An endogenous growth model is developed demonstrating both static and dynamic gains from trade for developing nations due to the beneficial effects of trade on imitation and technological diffusion. The concept of learning-to-learn in both imitative and innovative processes is incorporated into...

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...