This paper explores official trade data to identify patterns of smuggling in international trade. Our main measure of interest is the difference in matched partner trade statistics, i.e., the extent to which the recorded export value in the source country deviates from the reported import value...

International trade patterns at the product level are surprisingly dynamic. The majority of trade relationships exist for just a few, often only one to three, years. In this paper, I examine empirically the duration in German import trade at the 8-digit product level from 1995 to 2005. I find...

Recent research into international trade has highlighted the role of trade costs in determining the geography of trade. We propose that the notion of comparative advantage has to be expanded to include different capacities to transact and the pertinent factor endowments (organizational and...

This paper is about trade in an endogenous growth model with accumulation of physical and human capital. The convergence to the ray of steady states is proved for two different development stages of similar small countries. Free trade benefits the education sector of a relatively less developed...

The literature has identified that countries with higher levels of openness tend to present a larger government sector as a way to reduce the risks to the economy that openness entails. This paper argues that there are a number of policies that can mitigate trade-induced risks, many of which do...

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the international naval mission in the Gulf of Aden from 2008-2010, both in terms of its counter-piracy and its counter-terrorism objectives. We draw on arguments developed in the literature of law and economics, detailed statistical analyses and a large...

This paper examines the determinants of international competitiveness at the level of sectors and firms. First, we address the relation between cost-related and technological competition in a sample of fifteen OECD countries. Results suggest that the countries' sectoral market shares are indeed...

This study dissects with great acuteness some of the big questions on China-Africa relations in order to debunk burgeoning myths surrounding the nexus. It reviews a wealth of recent literature and presents the debate in three schools of thought. No substantial empirical evidence is found to...

We review about 100 papers on Sino-African relations published during the past 5 years for the most part, in order to put some structure on the existing strands. The literature is classified into dominant schools of thought, namely the: neocolonial or pessimistic; balance-development or...

The Washington consensus, the hitherto dominant scheme is being encroached by the Beijing model. Many African nations are increasingly embracing this Beijing approach because the dominant Western model has failed to deliver on a number of fronts. This is increasingly evident because China's...