Anthropological evidence suggests that the human species has evolved what could be called a "trading instinct" over millions of years of Darwinian adaptation, where trade acts as a social catalyst and thus as a suppressor of violent conflict among trading groups. Yet, the geographical and...

This Article, originally presented at a symposium, THE WTO AT A CROSSROADS, in 2004 at the Law Faculty of Bar Ilan University in Israel, provides a proposal that responds to the problems posed by the increasing prevalence of regional trade agreements. The Article argues that RTAs have tended to...

This paper studies the evolution of sectoral labor concentration in relation to the level of per capita income. We show that various measures of sectoral concentration follow a U-shaped pattern across a wide variety of data sources: countries first diversify, in the sense that labor is spread...

Globalization changes the role and functions of the border and creates new forms of regional cooperation and development, arising from the need to generate development opportunities and to enhance international competitiveness of states in the international interconnected frame of the present....

We introduce the revised version of the KOF Globalisation Index, a composite index measuring globalization for every country in the world along the economic, social and political dimension. The original index was introduced by Dreher (2006) and updated in Dreher et al. (2008). This second...

The weak global GDP growth since the financial crisis in 2007-2009 has coincided with unusually weak growth in global trade. Organisations that monitor international macro-economic development have identified growing protectionism – not least the increase in non-tariff barriers to trade, such...

What is the connection between different forms of globalization, economic growth, and welfare? International trade, cross-border capital flows, and labor movements are three areas in which economic historians have focused their research. I critically summarize various measures of international...

The worldwide trend towards privatisation, liberalisation and globalisation has produced substantial economic benefits. Nevertheless, liberalisation has had its shortcomings and there are potential threats to further progress, including in particular an anti-liberalisation backlash. Continuing...

Because international trade theory has not provided an unambiguous prediction on the impact of trade on growth, a vast literature tried to identify the relationship empirically. After summarizing the influential large country case studies of the 1970s and early 1980s - which showed the folly of...

Does trade openness cause higher GDP per capita? Since the seminal instrumental variables (IV) estimates of Frankel and Romer [F&R](1999) important doubts have surfaced. Is the correlation spurious and driven by omitted geographical and institutional variables? In this paper, we generalize F&R's...