This paper surveys the empirical literature on export and import diversification and its linkages with growth. We review widely-used measures of diversification and the evidence about their evolution focusing on how export diversification relates to trade liberalization and economic development....

This paper surveys the empirical literature on export and import diversification and its linkages with growth. We review widely-used measures of diversification and the evidence about their evolution focusing on how export diversification relates to trade liberalization and economic development....

This paper focuses on developing countries that export for the first time to the OECD and obtains several important results on export dynamic, linking exports experience and exports survival. Using product level data at the SITC 5 digit level for 114 developing countries on the 1962-2009 period,...

This paper focuses on developing countries that export for the first time to the OECD and obtains several important results on export dynamic, linking exports experience and exports survival. Using product level data at the SITC 5 digit level for 114 developing countries on the 1962-2009 period,...

With the reduction in tariff barriers, Non-tariff and behind-the-border measures (NTM and BTB) have increased in importance. This paper surveys the state of knowledge with the view to drawing implications for policy suggestions to reduce those NTM barriers that are welfare reducing. Following a...

The paper explores the evolution of export diversification patterns along the economic development path. Using a large database with 156 countries over 19 years at the HS6 level of disaggregation (4'991 product lines) we look for action at the “intensive” and “extensive” margins...

The “distance effect” measuring the elasticity of trade flows to distance has been to be rising since the early 1970s in a host of studies based on the gravity model, leading observers to call it the “distance puzzle”. We review the evidence and explanations. Using an extensive data set...

Alternative approaches to estimating the effects of non-tariff measures (NTMs) on trade flows are discussed and evaluated critically. Recent econometric studies point to three results: (i) NTM restrictiveness measures based on an aggregate of ‘core' NTMs are more restrictive than existing...

It was a hope of LDCs that the DOHA round would bring them greater market access in OECD countries than for non-LDCs. Using HS-6 tariff level data for the US and the EU for 2004, this paper estimates that, once the erosion from preferential access into the EU to non-LDCs are taken into account,...

This paper explores the evolution of OECD imports over time and as a function of income levels, measuring the concentration of those imports across origin countries at the product level. We find evidence of diversification followed, in the very last years of the sample period (post-2000), by a...