The Information Technology Agreement (ITA), a pluri-lateral trade agreement, seeks to accelerate and deepen the reduction of trade barriers for the critically important information and communication technology (ICT) industry. ITA thus provides an interesting case study of how tariff reduction...

In this paper, we explore the link between firm productivity and exporting using three firm level datasets of 1323 Tunisian manufacturing firms from 2004 to 2006. In particular, we examine whether more productive firms self-select into export markets, and whether exporters achieve productivity...

We study the effect of services trade restrictiveness on manufacturing productivity for a broad cross-section of countries at different stages of economic development. Decreasing services trade restrictiveness has a positive indirect impact on the manufacturing sectors that use services as...

The study empirically examined the learning-by-exporting effect in Chinese manufacturing firms from 2005 to 2007. The traditional view has been that exporting can lead to increased productivity by facilitating access to the global market and, thus, information and cutting-edge technologies; this...

Recent decades have witnessed an increasing integration of developing countries into global value chains (GVCs). This growing participation in global production sharing has raised hopes for economic upgrading within such value chains. However, globalization has intensified international...

Using firm-level tax administrative data from 2010 to 2017, we study the impact of Chinese import penetration on the performances of manufacturing firms in South Africa, and whether firms investing in capabilities development are more resilient to such competitive pressure. Specifically, by...

Services are playing an increasingly important role in the global economy. Over the last few decades, the sector's contribution to output, employment, and value-added trade has grown quite dramatically. The rise of services and apparent decline of manufacturing employment have raised concerns...

This paper examines the learning-by-exporting effect in Chinese manufacturing firms from 2005 to 2007. The traditional view is that exporting can lead to increased productivity by facilitating access to the global market and, thus, information and cutting-edge technologies; this process has been...

How does international trade affect structural transformation in developing countries? We use data on sectoral allocation of labour and value-added in 46 developing economies over the period 1995-2017 and exploit for identification plausibly exogenous variation in manufacturing imports from...

This paper examines the experience of 10 Asian countries with respect to growth, trade and FDI. It explores relationships between the nature of exports and imports and growth, as well as the relevance of FDI as a channel for these relationships. We find that FDI is often positively correlated...