OECD barriers did not play a significant role in sub-Saharan Africa's declining position in world trade over the last three decades. The detrimental effects of the African countries'own policies, such as those that influence international transport costs, were considerably more important....

Perhaps the major accomplishment of the Uruguay Round is agreements reached on nontariff barriers (NTBs). All NTBs imposed under the Multifiber Arrangement (MFA) will be phased out over 10 years, and all"voluntary"export restraints will be abolished. OECD countries'NTBs on agricultural goods...

The authors explore the argument that trade between the Mercosur countries should be stimulated by preferential policies because of their geographic proximity. That is, that the Mercosur countries are candidates for natural integration. They find that, on average, transportation margins on trade...

The methodological problems associated with standard partial equilibrium models may impart a significant bias in their projections of the trade effects of tariff cuts. First, these models fail to account for the price-raising effects of nontariff barriers (NTBs) that shift the supply curve for...

Because many developing countries fail to report trade statistics to the United Nations, there has been an interest in using partner-country data to fill these information gaps. The author used partner-country statistics for 30 developing countries to"estimate"actual (concealed) trade data and...

Two objectives of international commodity policy have been to reduce instability in exporter's earnings and importer's prices through international (buffer stock) agreements and to encourage further processing of domestically produced commodities by developing countries. However, it appears that...

Sharing different stages of manufacturing between countries is of major and growing importance. But because of previous deficiencies in the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC Revision 1) system, it was not possible to differentiate between the international trade in components and...

Matching exporters'freight on board (fob) trade statistics with the corresponding importers'cost, inventory and freight (cif) data, this paper studies the quality of official information on trade between 36 African countries. The author found the disparities in data so great as to make the...

Labor intensive goods are the strongest export items for developing countries - and the United States is the developing countries'biggest market. In 1965 the National Bureau of Economic Research predicted that developing countries would specialize in the manufacture and export of labor intensive...

For over three decades, Sub-Saharan African countries have had an interest in regional integration initiatives to accelerate their industrialization and growth. With the help of a more comprehensive database on intra-African trade than was previously available, the author examines a proposal to...