The impact of global crises, trade finance and aid on export flows: A developing country perspective

In this paper, we use a mixed-effects trade gravity model on a sample of 83 developing countries over the period 1990-2007 to assess the impact of trade finance and foreign aid on bilateral export flows. In addition to traditional variables, we also include a banking crises variable and a global economic downturns variable among the regressors. Differences across developing regions are taken into account. Our results suggest that: (i) trade finance has a positive and significant impact on bilateral export flows in all developing regions except Latin America; (ii) foreign aid matters in all regions; (iii) global economic downturns exert a negative and significant impact on export flows in all developing countries, and especially in Latin American and Sub-Saharan African economies; (iv) banking crises appear to have no significant impact in most developing regions.