To understand the role of trade policies in the crisis of 2008, this paper constructs the overall trade restrictiveness indices for a wide range of countries using their tariff schedules in 2008 and 2009. The index summarizes the trade policy stance of a country, taking into account the share of...

Because of high mortality rates, high rates of contagion, and the possibility of cross-species infection to mammals including humans, high pathogenic avian influenza is a major concern both to consumers and producers of poultry. The implications of the avian influenza for international poultry...

"Madagascar's textile and apparel industry has been among the fastest growing in Sub-Saharan Africa. Fueled by low labor costs, a fairly productive labor force, and preferential access to industrial countries, Madagascar's exports of textile and apparel products grew from about US

"Empirical evidence suggests that global trade reforms are unlikely to produce analogous results across countries, especially when analyzing their effect on poverty. This implies that the analysis of trade reform on social welfare cannot be generalized and needs to be conducted on a country by...

Despite some progress in the last decade, Sub-Saharan Africa’s participation in the global economy remains generally limited and poorly diversified. Among the various reasons behind the lack of competitiveness of Sub-Saharan Africa exports, this paper analyzes whether changes in market access...

The proliferation of preferential trade agreements has resulted in a complex system of preferences in which market access conditions are often discriminatory. In this paper we investigate how market access conditions have evolved between 2000 and 2009, and how this has affected international...

This paper quantifies trade policy changes and the associated trade impacts for about 100 countries between 2008 and 2009. Results show that there has been no widespread increase in protectionism. Only a few countries, including Russia, Argentina, Turkey, and China, have increased tariffs on...

This paper examines the presence of a pro-poor bias in the existing structure of protection of six Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gambia, and Madagascar. We build on a simple agricultural household production model and we propose an...