China's increased trade with, and investment in, Africa have boosted the continent's economic growth but have also generated considerable controversy. The aggregate data on China's overseas direct investment (ODI) in African countries reveal that China's share of the stock of foreign investment...

Addressing climate change requires the deployment of green technologies. Using novel transaction-level import data from firms in 35 emerging markets in a firm-level structural gravity model, this paper examines the trade policy determinants of firms' imports of products associated with green...

Despite enormous academic interest in international trade costs and keen policy interest in efforts to reduce them, little is known about the effects of trade facilitation measures. This study evaluates a significant Albanian reform that sharply reduced physical inspections of import shipments....

The focus of trade policy has shifted in recent years from economy-wide reductions in tariffs and trade restrictions toward targeted interventions to facilitate trade and promote exports. Most of these latter interventions are based on the new mantra of "aid-for-trade" rather than on hard...

This paper investigates whether the agglomeration of economic activity in regional clusters affects long-run manufacturing total factor productivity growth in an emerging market context. It explores a large firm-level panel dataset for Chile during a period characterized by high growth rates and...

The authors analyze the role of international technological diffusion for firm-level technological innovations in several developing countries. Their findings show that, after controlling for firm, industry, and country characteristics, exporting and importing activities are important channels...

The author studies the determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) for manufacturing firms in Bangladesh using data from a recent survey. She obtains TFP measures by making use of firm-specific deflators for output and inputs. Controlling for industry, location, and year fixed effects, she...

The empirical evidence on whether participation in export markets increases plant-level productivity has been inconclusive so far. The authors explain this inconclusiveness by drawing on Arrow's (1962) characterization of learning-by-doing, which suggests focusing on young plants and using...

Increases in international economic integration can lead to greater specialization according to comparative advantage, but also to the diffusion of skill-biased technologies. In developing countries characterized by relative abundance of unskilled labor, these factors can have opposite effects...