Trade Liberalisation and Export Performance in Selected Developing Countries

This paper examines the impact of trade liberalisation on export growth for a sample of developing economies using the export demand function approach. The research applies dynamic panel data models based on fixed-effects and generalised methods of moments (GMM) estimators. In addition, heterogeneous panels for the complete sample, as well as for different regions, are estimated using a time-series/cross-section technique. The main findings are that exports react negatively to an increase in relative prices, and positively to world income growth. Furthermore, export duties have a detrimental effect on export growth, though the impact is relatively small, while trade liberalisation emerges as a significant positive determinant of export performance.