This paper is designed to help both the beneficiary governments and donors of aid-for-trade identify countries that are under-performing in trade and which are receiving less aid for trade than their global performance might otherwise suggest is necessary. The authors develop ten measures of...

This paper shows that the institutional environment and the ability to export on time are sources of comparative advantage as important as factors of production. In particular, the ability to export on time is crucial to explain comparative advantage in intermediate goods. These findings...

Nearly two years after the onset of the financial crises, many central banks have brought their policy interest rates down to, or close to zero. Various governments have seen their budget deficits soar. Both policies have affected exchange rates, partly through market expectations. With a...

TRIST is a simple, easy to use tool to assess the adjustment implications of trade reform. It improves on existing tools. First, it is an improvement in terms of accuracy because projections are based on revenues actually collected at the tariff line level rather than simply applying statutory...

Successful export growth and diversification require not only entry into new export products and markets, but also the survival and growth of export flows. This paper uses a detailed, cross-country dataset of product level bilateral export flows to illustrate that exporting is an extremely...

The debate on whether natural disasters cause significant macroeconomic impacts and indeed hinder development is ongoing. Most analyses along these lines have focused on impacts on gross domestic product. This paper looks beyond this standard national accounting aggregate, and examines whether...

East Asia has experienced a dramatic decrease in output growth volatility over the past 20 years. This is good news, as output growth volatility affects poor households because of coping strategies that have long-term, harmful consequences, and the overall economy through its negative impact on...

This paper analyzes the drivers and consequences of sudden stops of capital flows. It focuses on the impact of external vulnerability on the depth and length of sudden stop crises. The authors analyze 43 developing and developed countries between 1993 and 2006. They find evidence that external...

This paper analyzes the impact of banking crises on manufacturing exports exploiting the fact that sectors differ in their needs for external financing. Relying on data from 23 banking crises episodes involving both developed and developing countries during the period 1980-2000 the authors...