This paper looks at Bulgaria's industrial restructuring through the lenses of its evolving specialization in international division oflabor and integration into international markets with a special emphasis on EU markets. Its major findings can be summarized as follows: (1) Developments in...

Using nationally representative, economywide data, this paper investigates the relative importance of trade-mandated effects on industry wage premia; industry and economywide skill premia; and employment flows in accounting for changes in the wage distribution in Brazil during the 1988-95 trade...

For many in Latin America, the increasing participation of China and India in international markets is seen as a looming shadow of two"mighty giants"on the region's manufacturing sector. Are they really mighty giants when it comes to their impact on manufacturing employment? The authors attempt...

Recent research shows that employment in Mexico's offshoring maquiladora industries is twice as volatile as employment in their U.S. industry counterparts. The analyses in this paper use data from Mexico's social security records and U.S. customs between the first quarter of 2007 and the last...

In this paper, the authors use a linked employer-employee database from Brazil to examine the impact of trade reform on the wages of workers employed at heterogeneous firms. The analysis of the data at the firm-level confirms earlier findings of a differential positive effect of trade...

This paper explores how the expansion of labor-intensive manufacturing exports resulting from the United States-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement in 2001 translated into wages of skilled and unskilled workers and the skill premium in Vietnam through the channel of labor demand. In order to...

By explicitly accounting for the interaction between importers and corrupt customs officials, the author argues that setting trade tariff rates at a uniform level, limits public official's ability to extract bribes from importers. If the government's main objective is to raise revenues at the...

In the mid-1950s sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 3.1 percent of global exports. By 1990 this share had fallen to 1.2 percent. The authors of this report find that Africa's extensive loss of competitiveness played a key role in its decline in world trade. If Africa had merely retained its...

Exports in the Middle Eastern countries should increase from $800 million to $900 million as a result of the tariff cuts agreed on in the Uruguay Round, according to the author.This represents an annual expansion of less than 1 percent. Projected gains are small because the erosion of tariff...

Duty drawback schemes, which typically involve a combination of duty rebates and exemptions, are a feature of many countries'trade regimes. They are used in highly protected developing economies as a means of providing exporters with imported inputs at world prices, thus increasing their...