The weak global GDP growth since the financial crisis in 2007-2009 has coincided with unusually weak growth in global trade. Organisations that monitor international macro-economic development have identified growing protectionism – not least the increase in non-tariff barriers to trade, such...

Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), two regions with large growth potential, have become increasingly connected over the last 20 years. China has emerged not only as a top trading partner, but also as an important competitor of LAC exports. China's retreat from certain markets, due...

The paper shows that the relationship between GDP per capita and levels of specialization can be predicted differently depending on whether the intensive or the extensive margin is considered. It shows that at the extensive margin countries continuously diversify their exports and that...

Es realmente cierto que la liberalización comercial repercute desfavorablemente sobre la distribución de los ingresos? Es la globalización la causante de la creciente brecha entre ricos y pobres? La evidencia empírica resultado de numerosos estudios señala que la liberalización comercial...

This study explores the impact of oil sector on global competitiveness of the GCC states in a panel data framework for the period from 2006 to 2014. The focus is placed on how the non-traditional factors; oil rents, fuel exports as percentage of merchandise exports, oil prices, and mining sector...

The costs of import substitution (IS) as a strategy for industrialization, which was deemed synonymous with economic development by many development economists of the fifties and sixties, were shown to be substantial in the influential and nuanced studies of the seventies and eighties under the...

The pre-eminence of trade and investment in the economic prosperity of developed and developing countries cannot be overemphasized. Many studies have shown a strong positive impact of trade on economic growth across developed and the emerging market. However, very little is known about the...

This paper addresses the lack of connection between theory and empirics in most export diversification - economic development studies. We provide a Ricardian-based theoretical explanation of countries' relative export variety as a function of the level of technology and country size assessed...

This volume was prepared by Sebastian Benz while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes five self-contained chapters. All chapters discuss different...

The traditional view that natural riches increase the wealth of nations has been recently challenged by empirical findings that point out that natural inputs are negatively related to growth. This paper shows, within a two-sector neo-classical growth model with international trade in goods, that...