Conventional wisdom suggests that when business regulation is excessive, deregulation should enhance efficiency. The liberalization of services markets in Croatia demonstrates that this is not necessarily the case, particularly when features of the reform process allow undue influence by those...

Conventional wisdom suggests that when business regulation is excessive, deregulation should enhance efficiency. The liberalization of services markets in Croatia demonstrates that this is not necessarily the case, particularly when features of the reform process allow undue influence by those...

Explanations for the West's escape from premature mortality have focused on chronic malnutrition or income and on public health or state capacity. We argue that by ignoring the multigenerational effects of variance in ancestors' harvests, we are underestimating the contribution of modern...

Higher levels of quota granted can induce and increase exports, but the impact is not the same across all tariff lines. Answers are sought to the question of how the level of exports changes as the quota size of tariff rate quotas changes, thus enabling the investigation of whether unilateral...

In July 1991, India began to dismantle its long-standing, highly restrictive import control regime and move toward a more open economy. How were policymakers able to dislodge and replace an entrenched system with powerful vested interests behind it? Standard explanations for policy change -...

The European Union has implemented various trade policies in the textile and clothing sector, a major global employment generator, over the past three decades. This paper investigates how these evolving policies have impacted the four largest exporters of textiles and clothing to the EU. A...

The creation of stable and high-paying jobs by private firms is a first-order issue for Low-and-Medium Income Countries (LMICs). Little is known as to whether trade liberalization helps achieve this goal. In this study, we investigate the impact of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA),...

We examine the effects of international trade in the presence of a set of domestic distortions giving rise to informality, a prevalent phenomenon in developing countries. In our quantitative model, the informal sector arises from burdensome taxes and regulations that are imperfectly enforced by...

A Kuznets-like curve for unemployment suggests that unemployment initially rises with early economic development due to sectoral shifts but decreases as economies mature, diversify, and adapt. This explains how gross national income (GNI) per capita influences or mediates the effect of...

Research about trade liberalization's impact on markups has focused on manufacturing due to data availability considerations. How do these effects vary across sectors? Which industries become more and less competitive as trade barriers are eliminated? We leverage firm-level tax records from the...

This paper examines the impact of imports from developed countries on industry-specific employment in India between 1983 and 2010. The identification strategy relies on comparing differential changes in import exposure across regions to the differential changes in employment within industries....

A major section of the existing literature on strategic trade policy, following a partial equilibrium framework, observed that imposition of tariff by the domestic country leads to a rise in their wage level. Analysis on the impact of strategic trade policy intervention (tariff) on wages and...

This paper examines how trade liberalization-induced labor demand shocks affect wages and non-wage working conditions. Using exogenous trade shocks from EU enlargement and worker-level data, we find that export liberalization increases temporary contracts and atypical work schedules,...

How does dismantling deep integration affect international trade? This paper provides new evidence on the consequences of disintegration by estimating the impact of Brexit on goods trade by UK firms. The UK’s exit from the EU’s single market and customs union in January 2021 led to an...

Explanations for the West's escape from premature mortality have focused on chronic malnutrition or income and on public health or state capacity. We argue that by ignoring the multigenerational effects of variance in ancestors' harvests, we are underestimating the contribution of modern...

US President Donald Trump proposed implementing "reciprocal tariffs", under which the US would raise import tariffs to match those imposed by its trading partners, further undermining the multilateral rules-based system. This policy brief examines the status quo of tariff differentials between...

This report provides a crucial analysis of these evolving dynamics, focusing on their impact on Africa's automotive sector–a key industry for the continent's industrialisation strategy and at the core of the transformation of global value chains in the last 30 years.

Industrial Revolution 4.0, with its emphasis on smart manufacturing, has a profound impact on traditional employment. This study aims to examine changes in firms employment decisions in the context of Industry 4.0, shedding light on the conflict between liberalism's market mechanisms and...

We examine the relationship between economic development and female labor force participation, with a focus on the impact of gender norms. Analyzing quasi-random variation in provincial exports in reunified Vietnam from 2002 to 2018, we find that a positive economic shock led to a significant...

On April 2, 2025, President Trump declared "Liberation Day", announcing broad tariffs to reduce trade deficits and revive U.S. industry. We analyze the long-term economic impacts of these tariffs through the lens of a trade model that features flexible tariff passthrough and endogenous trade...

I estimate the effects of two Canadian internal trade liberalizations on plant-level productivity, markups, and exports. In particular, I examine the New West Partnership and Trade Agreement (NWPTA) and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), both of which sought to reduce or remove...

This study examines trade openness, hydroelectric power production, and foreign direct investment (FDI) nexus on economic growth in Nigeria. Despite efforts toward trade liberalisation, Nigeria's growth remains constrained due to heavy reliance on oil and minerals exports. Furthermore,...