Regional integration agreements are examples of second-best policies and have an ambiguous impact on welfare. This article builds a model in which regional integration agreements unambiguously raise welfare by correcting for externalities. It assumes that trade between neighboring countries...

After decades of high trade restrictions, fiscal distortions, and currency overvaluation, Cameroon implemented important commercial and fiscal policy reforms in 1994. Almost simultaneously, a major devaluation cut the international price of Cameroon's currency in half. This article examines the...

This article examines the trade policy response of Latin American governments to the rapid growth of Chinese and Indian exports in world markets. To explain more protection in sectors where a large share of imports originates in China and India, the “protection for sale” model is extended to...

Although average Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) tariffs on imports from the least developed countries are very low; tariffs above 15 percent have a disproportional effect on their exports. Products subject to tariff peaks tend to be heavily concentrated in...

The objective of this paper is to explore the impact of Uruguay's privatization and subsequent nationalization of water services on network access and water quality. The results suggest that although the early privatization of water services had little impact on access to the sanitation network;...

The database described in this article provides researchers with a broad set of data on trade, production, and protection for 28 manufacturing sectors at the three-digit level of the International Standard Industrial Classification, Revision 2. The database covers up to 100 developing and...

A political economy model of protection is used to determine endogenously the intersectoral patterns of protection. Three propositions are derived that are consistent with the stylized patterns of tariff protection in rich and poor countries: Nominal protection rates escalate with the degree of...

The proliferation of preferential trade liberalization over the last 20 years has raised the question of whether it slows multilateral trade liberalization. Recent theoretical and empirical evidence indicates that this is the case even for unilateral preferences that developed countries provide...

A semiparametric varying coefficient model is used to explore the heterogeneity in returns to export promotion across countries. Differences in characteristics of export-promotion agencies drive the heterogeneity in returns. Interestingly, characteristics that matter for export growth do not...