Widespread food insecurity remains a daunting challenge in Africa, despite significant gains in global efforts to eliminate hunger over the last three decades. This paper examines the effects of easing trade across borders – through reductions in documents, time, and costs to export and import...

The system of global agricultural and food trade is undergoing rapid processes of change, with important implications for economic development. In this paper we document and discuss these changes; including the rapid growth and structural change in agri-food trade, the increased consolidation in...

Several of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) suggest that improving well-being is achievable through trade. The free flow of goods and services internationally, which encourages efficient production and expansion of consumption, may support SDGs concerning inclusive and sustainable...

We study the causal effect of trade liberalization on child mortality by exploiting 41 policy reform experiments in the 1960-2010 period. The Synthetic Control Method for comparative case studies allows to compare at the country level the trajectory of post-reform health outcomes of treated...

Global Value Chains (GVC) have reshaped the landscape of international trade. The quality and intensity of regulation significantly impacts firms' competitiveness and their ability to engage in GVC. Economic literature suggests that regulation of product market competition has a detrimental...

High trade costs pose substantial barriers to the process of trade liberalization. This study aims to measure trade costs and explore the driving forces behind the growth of bilateral trade between Cambodia and its top 30 trading partners from 1993 to 2019. Using a micro-founded measure of trade...

The effect of exchange rate regimes on economic performance is one of the key questions in international economics, both academically and policy-wise. Based on the theory of Optimum Currency Areas (OCA), we examine how labor market regulations affect the relationship between exchange rate...

This paper examines Nigeria's long run growth path using the externally and internally constrained version of Thirlwall's growth model from 1982 to 2015. The present study modifies the SCA-BOPCG to take into account the effects the foreign contents in exports growth and the domestic investment....

Voluminous theoretical and empirical research shows that real exchange rate (RER) undervaluation could be conducive to economic development. Why do countries then often avoid the pursuit of policies that facilitate undervaluation or even intentionally pursue RER overvaluation? We address this...

Regional integration occupies a prominent place in the economic policies of most sub-Saharan African countries. However, despite different waves of initiatives across the African continent, the majority of African regional schemes have not managed to achieve their ambitious goal of promoting...