Under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), international trade has increased significantly — and tariffs have declined equally dramatically — over the past 70 years (see Figures 1 and 2). It comes as no surprise that this growth in trade has been accompanied by...

Since the onset of the global financial crisis, China and the U.S. have reduced their current-account imbalances as a share of GDP to less than half their pre-crisis levels. For China, the reduction in its current-account surplus post-crisis suggests a structural change. Panel regressions for a...

"Recent attempts to measure competitiveness across countries have typically neglected the world's smallest economies. Hence, a simple composite index, the small state manufactured export competitiveness index or SSMECI, was developed to benchmark industrial competitiveness. The SSMECI represents...