In recent years wages in China have been rising and the yuan has appreciated, potentially eroding China's cost advantage in manufactures. This paper explores the evolution of China's relative unit labor costs in manufacturing over 1998-2009. Between 1998 and 2003 China's unit labor costs fell,...

In West Africa, recorded intra-regional trade is small but informal cross-border trade (ICBT) is pervasive, despite regional integration schemes intended to promote official trade. We argue that ICBT must be understood in light of two features of West African national boundaries: divergent...

This paper provides a revised measure of regulatory restrictions on inward foreign direct investment (FDI)for OECD countries and extends the approach to 13 non-member countries. The methodology is largely similar to that adopted in the previous version of the OECD indicator and covers three...

The bivariate relationship between real exchange rates and the real long-term interest rate differential has been investigated in a number of recent studies. By exchange-rate-equation standards, this specification does a relatively good job of tracking the historical movements in the...

This paper provides a revised measure of regulatory restrictions on inward foreign direct investment (FDI) for OECD countries and extends the approach to 13 non-member countries. The methodology is largely similar to that adopted in the previous version of the OECD indicator and covers three...

This paper presents new estimates of country-specific international transport costs for 21 OECD countries over the period 1973-2005. The methodology is based on direct measures of air, maritime, and road transport costs rather than on cif/fob ratios or other balance of payments data employed in...

This paper provides a new perspective on Chinese international competitiveness in manufacturing using relative unit labour costs. We find that Chinese unit labour costs are about 25-40 per cent of US labour costs. They are also low relative to costs in the EU, Japan, Mexico, Korea and most other...