Africa's share of global exports has dropped by 50 percent over the last three decades. To stem this decline, aid for trade to the region has increased rapidly in recent years. Assistance can target improvements in three important components of trade facilitation: transit times, documentation,...

Export superstars are important for export growth and diversification and are typically born large. Firm-level data on manufacturing trade from 32 developing countries show that the top five exporters account for on average nearly one-third of exports, 47 percent of export growth, and a third of...

Whether demands for bribes for particular government services are associated with expedited or delayed policy implementation underlies debates around the role of corruption in private sector development. The "grease the wheels” hypothesis, which contends that bribes act as speed money, implies...

This paper focuses on the sluggish growth of world trade relative to income growth in recent years. We use a simple empirical strategy based on an error correction model to assess whether the global trade slowdown is structural or cyclical. An estimate of the relationship between trade and...

This paper explores the economic impacts of preferential trade agreements, conditional on their level of ambition. It clusters 278 agreements, encompassing 910 provisions over 18 policy areas and estimates the trade elasticity for the different clusters. These elasticities are used in a series...

Most economic analyses of climate change have focused on the aggregate impact on countries of mitigation actions. We depart first in disaggregating the impact by sector, focusing particularly on manufacturing output and exports. Second, we decompose the impact of a modest agreement on emissions...

Surprisingly little is known about policies that affect international trade in services. Previous analyses have focused on policy commitments made by countries in international agreements, but in many cases, these commitments do not reflect actual policy. This paper describes a new initiative to...

Maritime transport costs significantly impede international trade. This article examines why these costs are so high in some countries and quantifies the importance of two explanations: restrictive trade policies and private anticompetitive practices. It finds that both matter, but the latter...

Most economic analyses of climate change have focused on the aggregate impact on countries of mitigation actions. We depart first in disaggregating the impact by sector, focusing particularly on manufacturing output and exports. Second, we decompose the impact of a modest agreement on emissions...