The author reviews trends and developments in world trade, investigating the elements involved in the accelerated integration of world trade rights in the past decade. He explores what conditions and policy initiatives make it easier for countries to benefit from global trade and capital flows,...

A few years ago, many western companies were eager to consider investing in Eastern Europe and, more recently, in South Asia, where ongoing reform, large domestic markets, and cheap but qualified labor are transforming the region into a potentially fierce competitor for foreign direct investment...

The author explores a possible link between financial development and trade in manufactures. His theoretical model focuses on the role of financial intermediaries in facilitating large-scale, high-return projects. Results show that economies with better developed financial sectors have a...

Using a political economy approach, the authors analyze the pattern of protection in Mexico's manufacturing sector during the period of trade policy reforms (1985-89), when Mexico experienced significant trade liberalization and an important inflow of foreign direct investment. They take into...

Payments problems constrained interstate trade among the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries in 1992-95, especially during the prolonged demise of the ruble zone. Two kinds of solutions should be sought: 1) more effective stabilization measures to improve the prospects of currency...

The author analyzes the determinants of manufactured exports in Africa and other developing countries, guided by three pivotal views on Sub-Saharan Africa's (Africa's) prospects in manufactured exports: * Adrian Woods holds that Africa cannot have comparative advantage in exports of...

The authors have prepared this paper as a companion to the Trade and Production database, which contains trade, production, and tariff data for 67 industrial and developing countries at the industry level for 1976-99. The sector disaggregation in the database follows the International Standard...

Not until the end of the twentieth century, the"second globalization,"has the ratio of trade to Gross Domestic Product been comparable to that during the first globalization, which took place at the end of the nineteenth century and was interrupted by World War I. Technological progress has...

reviews the micro-level evidence on the effects of trade and investment liberalization in the developing world. He focuses, in particular, on the effects of the 1991 trade reform in India since it provides an excellent controlled experiment in which the effects of a drastic trade regime change...

The authors apply a gravity model to data on annual non-fuel imports for 58 countries for the years 1980-96, to quantify the effects on trade of recently created or revamped preferential trade agreements (PTAs). They modify the usual gravity equation to identify the separate effects of PTAs on...