According to the Washington Consensus, developing countries’ growth would benefit from reductions in barriers to trade. However, the empirical basis for judging trade reforms is weak. Econometrics are mostly ad hoc; results are typically not judged against models; policies are poorly measured;...

This paper reviews the policy debate on development issues and examines the economic prospects for developing countries at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is specifically concerned with the question of whether developing countries will be able to meet the employment and poverty...

Central to the following discussion is the assertion that a foreign trade policy which maximizes the static efficiency gains from trade may result in reduced dynamic or X-efficiency and thus impair a developing country’s development potential. The dominant view of the relation between...