While openness to trade is a well-recognized hallmark of the Asian growth model, another component of the model is a leapfrogging strategy - the use of policies to guide industrial structural transformation ahead of a country's factor endowment. Does the leapfrogging strategy work? Opinions vary...

This paper furnishes robust evidence that the GATT/WTO has had a powerful and positive impact on trade. The impact has, however, been uneven. GATT/WTO membership for industrial countries has been associated with a large increase in imports estimated at about 40 percent of world trade. The same...