Although trade liberalization is being actively promoted as a key component in development strategies, theoretically, the impact of trade openness on poverty reduction is ambiguous. A more liberalized trade regime is argued to change relative factor prices in favor of the more abundant factor....

This paper examines the impact of trade facilitation on intra-African trade. The authors examine the role of trade facilitation reforms, such as increased port efficiency, improved customs, and regulatory environments, and upgrading services infrastructure on trade between African countries....

This paper estimates the magnitude of liberal grade promotion in public schools in Nepal by comparing the pass rate in internally administered exams with the pass rate in the district-exam whose scores determine grade transition. The pass rate in the year-end exam is three and a half times as...

This paper studies the impact of input-trade liberalization on firms' decision to upgrade foreign technology embodied in imported capital goods. The empirical analysis is motivated by a simple theoretical framework of endogenous technology adoption, heterogeneous firms and imported inputs. The...

With the growing importance of services and foreign direct investment in services, it is important to have a framework to analyze the impact of the liberalization of barriers to foreign direct investment in services. This paper summarizes several recent papers and builds policy-based computable...

Indian gross domestic product per capita increased rapidly between 2001 and 2006 in a climate of increasing services trade, with the export-oriented services sector responsible for rising shares of growth in gross domestic product. Due to its contribution to aggregate economic growth, there is a...

Critical appraisals of the current and potential benefits from developing country engagement in the World Trade Organization (WTO) focus mainly on the Doha Round of negotiations. This paper examines developing country participation in the WTO dispute settlement system to enforce foreign market...

Green growth policies confront firms and workers with adjustments that may create welfare costs for different segments of the population and cause reductions in near-term actual versus potential gross domestic product. There is little evidence on the cost of adjustment to climate change...

A unilateral trade reform generates two opposite effects: market access expansion and strengthening of competitive pressures in the liberalized market. Using detailed trade and firm-level data from France, the authors investigate how French firms' product scope and export sales changed after...

The relationships between trade facilitation, trade flows, and capacity building are complex and challenging to assess, both empirically and in implementation. The authors measure and estimate the relationship between trade facilitation and trade flows across 75 countries in global trade,...