China's opening to trade is interpreted as a shift in world average factor endowments, which altered the comparative advantage of other countries. In the rest of the world on average, this shift reduced the ratio of labour-intensive manufacturing to primary production by 7-10% for output and...

Between mid-1988 and mid-1989, Vietnam greatly reduced a very high inflation rate at the same time as removing almost all administrative control over individual prices. This paper examines that experience, in relation to the quite different experiences of most other socialist countries. The...

Cross-country econometric analysis informed by Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory suggests that the concentration of Africa's exports on unprocessed primary products is caused largely by the region's combination of low levels of education and abundant natural resources. In some African countries, the...

Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory suggests that greater openness tends to enlarge intercountry differences in stocks of skill (or human capital), which new growth theory suggests would cause intercountry divergence of per capita incomes. Econometric analysis of data on about ninety countries during...

What is the role of a bilateral donor such as DFID in the field of finance and development? What should be its priorities, and what instruments are available in the three domains in which it can act - internationally, through governments, and on the private sector? In this article, we offer some...

Summary The Collier-Dollar approach to aid allocation among countries has been less than fully embraced by donors--even those focused on poverty reduction--partly because it conflicts with the approach to aid allocation implied by the Millennium Development Goals. These two approaches are shown...

The relative costs of trading different goods vary much less than the relative costs of producing them. The costs of trade are also often high. In consequence, as this paper shows theoretically and with simulations, demand elasticities in open economies are much lower than substitution...