The objective of this study is to analyze transportation costs incurred by Caribbean countries on their major export products to determine whether there is evidence of freight rate discrimination against these countries, or whether their transport costs are significantly different from those of...

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...

In spite of their extensive applications in research and policy studies, no previous product level comparisons have been made between Balassa's revealed comparative advantage index (RCA) and indices which reflect the standard Hecksher-Ohlin theory of comparative advantage. This study conducts...

U.N. Commodity Trade (COMTRADE) statistics have major shortcomings for many analyses relating to tariffs and other trade barriers. The use of a cost-insurance-freight valuation base for these data results in an upward (sometimes severe) bias in the implied dutiable value of imports for countries...

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...

From the mid-1950s to 1990, sub-Saharan Africa's share of global exports fell from 3.1 to under 1.2 percent, a decline that implies associated export earning losses of about $65 billion annually. Previous studies show that foreign trade barriers do not account for this poor performance. Indeed,...

Some developing countries may experience important trade losses if tariffs are liberalized on a general most-favored-nation (MFN) basis. Sub-Saharan Africa appears to be especially vulnerable to this problem. African countries receive important Lome Convention preferences in the European...