This paper uses the gravity model of trade to investigate the link between foreign aid and exports in recipient countries. Most of the theoretical work emphasizes the negative impact of aid on recipient countries' exports primarily due to exchange rate appreciation, disregarding possible...

Trade promotes economic growth, alleviates poverty and helps countries reach their development goals. However, developing countries – in particular the least developed – face difficulties in making trade happen and turning trade into economic growth. The Aid for Trade Initiative – launched...

One reason donors provide foreign aid is to support their exports to aid-recipient countries. Time series data for Germany suggests an average return of between US$ 1.04 to US$ 1.50 for each US dollar of aid spent by Germany. Although this is well below previous estimates, the value is robust to...

This paper develops a model to study the impact of trade costs on developing countries' industrialization when sequential production is networked in global value chains (GVCs). In a two-country setting, a decrease in trade costs of intermediate goods is associated with South joining and moving...

Although the concept of aid for trade has quickly gained prominence among aid donors as well as aid recipients, relatively little is known about its impact on trade-related performance. This paper uses statistical evidence to examine the effects of aid for trade on the costs of trading and on...

The empirical literature on aid for trade (AfT) mainly considers its effects on merchandise trade and investment. In this paper we examine the relationship between AfT and trade in services as well as trade in goods over 2002-2015 in both aggregate and bilateral analysis. We observe...

Existing research generally finds weak positive effects of aid for trade (AfT) on aggregate merchandise trade of recipients once endogeneity in the AfT-trade relationship is accounted for. In this paper, we confirm weak findings for both aggregate merchandise and services trade of recipients,...

Anderson and vanWincoop (2003) developed what has become the standard framework for framing and interpreting empirical work using the gravity model. Its main advantage is that it recognizes and tackles the issue of endogeneity of prices. Hoverer, two shortcomings of their framework are that 1)...