This paper analyzes Zambian export patterns using a new transaction-level trade data set for the period 1999-2011. The data show that, in international comparison, Zambian exports are exceptionally concentrated (on mining products). This reliance has been increasing in recent years. Zambia's...

The authors show that exported products exit the US market sooner if they violate the Heckscher-Ohlin notion of comparative advantage. Crucially, this pattern is stronger when exporting country has a well-developed banking system, measured by a high ratio of bank credit over the GDP. Banks thus...

Financial liberalization may have a positive effect on growth not only through the increase in the quantity of the available funds, but also through a more efficient allocation of resources across firms and sectors. Despite this intuitive appeal, there is little empirical evidence on the...

This paper investigates the link between export survival of agri-food products and financial development. It tests the hypothesis that financial development differentially affects the survival of exports across products based on their need of external finance. The authors test whether exports of...

This paper explores the evolution of OECD imports over time and as a function of income levels, measuring the concentration of those imports across origin countries at the product level. The authors find evidence of diversification followed, in the last years of the sample period (post-2000), by...

Recent data show that the institutional content of preferential trade agreements has evolved over time. Although pre-1990s preferential trade agreements mostly focused on tariff liberalization, recent agreements increasingly contain deep provisions in diverse areas, such as intellectual property...

This paper studies the effects of trade policy uncertainty on the extensive and intensive margins of trade for a sample of 65 exporters at the Harmonized System six-digit level. The paper measures trade policy uncertainty as the gap between binding tariff commitments under trade agreements...

Preferential trade agreements have become deeper over time, often encompassing policy areas that go beyond traditional trade policy, such as investment, competition, and intellectual property rights protection. In the literature, a prominent argument why countries sign "deep" agreements is to...

World trade is increasingly ruled by preferential trade agreements (PTAs), but their precise nature remains relatively opaque. This paper assesses a central dimension of these agreements, the significance of tariff preferences, using a new data set on preferential and non-preferential or Most...

Using a cross-section of more than 29,000 manufacturing firms in 64 developing and emerging countries from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys, this paper assesses whether trading firms have a female labor share premium relative to non-trading firms. It focuses on four types of trading firms:...