In 2005 the World Trade Organization announced the Aid for Trade initiative aiming developing countries to connect to the multilateral trading system. This financial assistance is to improve the supply-side capacity (economic infrastructure, productive capacity) in the underdeveloped countries...

The European Union has built up special relationship with the developing countries. To achieve the aims of the common development policy, the EU grants not only financial aid but also trade preferences in order to help the reintegration of these countries into the world economy. The most...

This paper quantifies how much of exports from eight East Asian economies were consumed by consumers in China, US, Japan, other developed economies, and the rest of the world. We control for the indirect exports through China, i.e., the parts and components that East Asian economies exported to...

We investigate how protectionist policies influence short-run economic growth. Our empirical strategy exploits an extraordinary tax scandal that gave rise to an unexpected change of government in Sweden. A free-trade majority in parliament was overturned by a protectionist majority in 1887. The...

Tests for causality and rationality in the coffee futures market were carried out using data from the New York Market. Tests of causality indicated that futures prices strongly influence variations in spot price eight weeks or more to maturity. However, beginning seven weeks to maturity there...

This paper identifies factors associated with takeoff -- a sustained period of high growth following a period of stagnation. We examine a panel of 241 "stagnation episodes" from 146 countries, 54 % of these episodes are followed by takeoffs. Countries that experience takeoffs average 2.3% annual...

The economic slowdown experienced in Colombia since 1980 is explained by the structural stagnation of the national economy and the escalation of violence associated with the expansion of drug trafficking. The available data do not reject this hypothesis. The article sustains that...

Is free trade good for growth? Some of the most disturbing evidence to the contrary comes from a period that is often described as the first era of globalization. Studies of the period 1870-1914 have emphasised that protectionist tariff policy was associated with higher rates of economic growth....

The analysis of the effect of tariffs for labor productivity faces the challenge of tariff policy endogeneity. Tariff policy is designed to promote economic development and the industrial sector tariff structure may reflect characteristics of the industries protected. We seek to identify the...

The barrier model of productivity growth suggests that individual country productivity is related to the world technology frontier disturbed by national barriers. We offer a country study of the barrier model exploiting the dramatic changes in the linkages to the world economy in South Africa....