This paper explores the impact of the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) agreement on food security by using a gravity model to examine the regional changes in trade in agricultural products. This is followed by a discussion of how this might affect the four dimensions of food security,...

We provide evidence indicating that countries with well-developed social security systems do not necessarily face a trade-off between social spending and competitiveness. On average, countries that spend a lot on social needs score well in the competitiveness league. We investigate the...

Global value chains offer countries unique opportunities to participate in and benefit from international trade by specializing in specific production stages and tasks. The objective of this study is twofold: (i) to investigate the evolution of African countries participation in global value...

We examine the real and financial integration of East Asian economies, comparing the degree of real versus financial integration, the degree of global versus regional integration, and the extent of integration before versus after the 1997/98 financial crisis in East Asian economies. We analyze...

Global Value Chains (GVCs) have become a central topic in trade and development policy but little is known about their actual impact on economic performance because data availability has been limited. Using a new unique set of Inter- Country Input-Output tables with extensive country coverage, I...

In this paper, we develop a multi-country open economy extension of the famous Big Push model for a closed economy by Murphy et al. (1989). We show under which conditions the global economy in our model is caught in a poverty trap, characterised by a low-income equilibrium from which an escape...