Following the conclusion of the TRIPS Agreement, much has been written on the potential costs and benefits of stronger Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) protection in terms of its impact on innovation and technology transfer, as well as economic growth and welfare. This paper documents the...

Abstract Trade in goods and services is likely to be an important channel for international knowledge diffusion. This paper considers the extent of R&D spillovers through intermediate inputs for a sample of up to 40 developed and developing countries. Results suggest that such spillovers are...

Our study extends the recent literature on the importer-productivity relationship to a firm-level dataset for sub-Saharan Africa. Using a cross-section sample of 3090 firms in 19 countries, we find that importers are more productive than non-importers. The observed importer premium is found to...

This paper examines productivity differences between internationally trading and non-trading firms using data on a sample of firms from 19 sub-Saharan African countries. The paper provides the first evidence of whether exporters, importers and two-way traders perform better than non-traders, and...

This paper adds to the small but growing literature that considers a relationship between the way a firm serves foreign markets and its subsequent performance. The current paper is the first to consider this issue for a sample of sub-Saharan African countries and includes data on both...

In this paper we examine the impact of membership in Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) on trade between PTA members. Rather than considering the impact of PTA membership on the volume of trade we consider the impact of membership on the structure of trade. For a large sample of countries over...

This paper addresses the link between productivity and labour mobility. The hypothesis tested in the paper is that technology is transmitted across industries through the movement of skilled workers embodying human capital. The embodied knowledge is then diffused within the new environment...

We analyse the robustness of potential determinants of the differences in the long-run growth rate of GDP per capita across EU regions using quantile regression. We propose using Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) methods on the class of quantile regression models in order to assess the set of...

The impact of the Central and Eastern European economies' trade integration with European markets on CEE trade structures has been studied extensively. These studies frequently observe a quality upgrading of CEE exports. In this paper we consider three dimensions of quality upgrading upgrading...

In this paper we consider the trade creating effects of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) for a large sample of countries over the period 1960-2000. The paper builds upon the existing literature by examining whether any significant effects of PTAs occur through a change in the variety of...