This paper describes the United States recently enacted Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and assesses its quantitative impact on African exports. The AGOA expands the scope of preferential access of Africa's exports to the United States in key areas such as clothing. However, its medium...

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), signed into American law on May 18, 2000, is a major plank of U.S. initiatives toward the African continent. The Act aims broadly at improving economic policymaking in Africa, enabling countries to embrace globalization, and securing durable...

This paper elaborates on a number of key principles that need to underpin a coherent and development-friendly architecture for the WTO. The key principles include enlarging the scope of WTO bargaining to include labor flows as well as capital flows; creating a structure that would provide a...

This paper estimates the effect of China's exchange rate changes on exports of developing countries in third markets. The degree of competition between China and its developing country competitors in specific products and destinations plays a key role in the identification strategy. The strategy...

This paper examines different explanations--initial conditions, openness to trade and FDI, and institutions--of the Mauritian growth experience since the mid-1970s. We show that arguments based on openness to trade and FDI are either misleading or incomplete, and the transmission mechanism...

This paper examines different explanations-initial conditions, openness to trade and FDI, and institutions-of the Mauritian growth experience since the mid-1970s. We show that arguments based on openness to trade and FDI are either misleading or incomplete, and the transmission mechanism...

This paper documents an unusual and possibly significant phenomenon: the export of skills, embodied in goods, services or capital from poorer to richer countries. A set of stylized facts is presented. Using a measure which combines the sophistication of a country’s exports with the...

A major challenge for the multilateral trading system is to secure the benefits of trade liberalization without infringing on the freedom of governments to pursue legitimate domestic objectives. The difficulty lies in distinguishing between two types of situations. In one, a non-protectionist...