Since the late 1980's many Sub-Saharan African governments, under the auspices of the World Bank and IMF, have embarked on substantial reform programmes aimed at liberalising trade and expanding exports. There has been a large literature exploring aggregate export and growth response to trade...

If a free trade agreement (FTA) is characterized by the exchange of market access with a large and competitive trading partner, the agreement can cause a leakage of protectionist benefits to domestic industry from lobbying against external tariff cuts. This rent destruction effect of an FTA can...