Evidence suggests that Pakistan has the potential for much faster and more diversified economic growth. Energizing trade can help Pakistan to realize its growth potential. Pakistan’s inward-oriented trade policies have had the effect of stalling Pakistan’s integration into regional and...

With further declines in international assistance expected over the coming years, the government of Afghanistan faces a new challenge of enabling new growth drivers. One such driver is trade. Decades of civil war and military occupation that culminated in the fall of the Taliban in 2001, have...

This paper analyzes the effects of local externalities on the probability of starting a new economic activity. We use firm-level data and geographic information on French zip-codes for 1993-2002. Poisson and Negative Binomial panel data models are estimated as they naturally allow for large sets...

We address the trade effect of restrictive product standards on the margins of trade, by matching a detailed panel of French firm exports with a new database compiling the list of Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary regulatory measures that have been raised as a concern in dedicated committees of the...

Using highly disaggregated US import data from 157 countries between 1996 and 2009, we first provide evidence that banking crises negatively affect the survival of trade relations. On average, the occurrence of a banking crisis decreases the rate of survival of trade relations by 13 percent....

In this paper, the two way relationship between deep integration and production networks trade is investigated. Deep integration is captured by a set of indices constructed in terms of policy areas covered in preferential trade agreements. An augmented gravity equation is estimated to...

We examine the effects of transit, documentation, and ports and customs delays on Africa's exports. We find that transit delays have the most economically and statically significant effect on exports. A one day reduction in inland travel times leads to a 7 percent increase in exports. Put...

This paper studies the relationship between export policy and food prices. We show that, when individuals are loss averse, food exporters may use trade policy to shield the domestic economy from large price shocks. This creates a complementarity between the price of food in international markets...

This paper analyses the trade effects of restrictive product standards on the margins of trade for a large panel of French firms. To focus on restrictive product standards only, we use a new database compiling the list of measures that have been raised as concerns in dedicated committees of the...