Controversy has surrounded the role exports play in stimulating economic growth. Some authors find causation from exports to GNP, while others have concluded that exports retard GNP growth. Still others find no causation or find bidirectional causation with the Sims test but not with the Granger...

There is a stark contrast between the ambitious investment promotion efforts of many least developed countries (LDCs) and their often minimal commitments under the General Agreement on Trade in Service (GATS). At a time of urgent need to address domestic infrastructure and investment gaps, this...

The establishment of a Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) which would combine the members of three existing regional economic communities, i.e. the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), was...

LDCs' trade in goods and services changed in the past decade, thanks to the rebalancing of global demand towards large emerging countries and the resulting high international commodity prices. This process led to a wider geographical diversification of LDCs' exports but contributed also to a...

This paper studies the impact of market power on international commodity prices. I use a standard oligopoly model and exploit historical variations in the structure of the international coffee bean market to assess the impact of a cartel treaty on coffee prices and its global welfare...

The export tax rebate (ETR) policy is one of the most frequently used policy instruments by Chinese policy makers. This paper therefore provides a vital analysis of its allocation effects. To motivate our empirical analysis for the allocation effects of the ETR policy, we first add a tax rebate...

This paper studies how a positive export shock - the sharp increase in garment-sector exports that began at the end of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) - spread through Bangladesh's labor markets. Although the end of the MFA was arguably exogenous to Bangladesh, we instrument export demand with...

This paper contributes to the debate on the key factors shaping global value chains in the garment sector by focusing on one aspect: namely trade regimes and their related ‘rules of origin'. We study Bangladesh, the leading least developed global garment manufacturer, to assess how changes in...

The general understanding of international trade has been transformed over the past decade or so with the now massive body of literature developed in the context of so-called "new new trade theory" which takes into account the heterogeneity of firms and the importance of fixed costs of trade....