The authors show that exported products exit the US market sooner if they violate the Heckscher-Ohlin notion of comparative advantage. Crucially, this pattern is stronger when exporting country has a well-developed banking system, measured by a high ratio of bank credit over the GDP. Banks thus...

This paper investigates whether the Pesticides Initiative Program has significantly affected the export performance of Senegal' shorticulture industry. The authors apply two main microeconometric techniques, difference-in-differences and matching difference-in-differences, to identify the effect...

Financial liberalization may have a positive effect on growth not only through the increase in the quantity of the available funds, but also through a more efficient allocation of resources across firms and sectors. Despite this intuitive appeal, there is little empirical evidence on the...

The following section are included:IntroductionWhat Do Democratic Transitions Look Like?How Do Transitions Happen?What Makes Transitions Successful?ConclusionAppendixAcknowledgmentsReferences

90 countries have changed regimes in the last half century. Of these, 46% experienced a successful transition to democracy, 39% failed, and 15% moved gradually to democracy. In this paper, we explore the initial conditions associated with transition and with its success. We find that gender...

This paper explores the evolution of OECD imports over time and as a function of income levels, measuring the concentration of those imports across origin countries at the product level. The authors find evidence of diversification followed, in the last years of the sample period (post-2000), by...