This volume offers a rousing defense of pro-free-trade policies and their benefits for developing countries. Through cross-country evidence and detailed case studies, Arvind Panagariya demonstrates the need for trade openness for sustained growth and poverty alleviation.

How do shifts in trade affect social protections for the poor? Although the fraction of the world's population considered the 'extreme' poor has fallen by over one-half over the past quarter century, many of those lifted above the global poverty line remain vulnerable to shocks that could place...

While barriers to trade in most goods and some services including capital flows have been reduced considerably over the past two decades, many remain. Such policies harm most the economies imposing them, but the worst of the merchandise barriers (in agriculture and textiles) are particularly...