Institutions Trade & Economic Development
Aditya Dasgupta (University of California, Merced), Kishore Gawande (University of Texas, Austin), and Devesh Kapur (Johns Hopkins University – SAIS) More than half of all nations have experienced a violent civil conflict since 1960.[1] One of the best predictors of conflict outbreak in a country is a low level of economic development and whether it […]
By Scott L. Baier (Clemson University), Jeffrey H. Bergstrand (University of Notre Dame), and Matthew W. Clance (University of Pretoria) It is now widely accepted that economic integration agreements (EIAs) and other trade-policy liberalizations contribute to nations’ economic growth and development. EIAs have proliferated among North-North (N-N), North-South (N-S), and South-South (S-S) country-pairs. While such agreements inevitably alter […]
By Avinash Dixit (Princeton University) How should a country fight corruption? Most people would answer that the government should make and enforce strong laws against it. But further thinking should show that this approach won’t get far. The politicians who make laws, and the officials who enforce them, all stand to benefit from the prevailing […]
By Eric Alston (University of Colorado Boulder), Lee Alston (Indiana University Bloomington), Bernardo Mueller (University of Brasilia), and Tomas Nonnenmacher (Allegheny College, Pennsylvania) Today, the notion that “institutions matter” is broadly accepted. Scholars have generated a rich literature on the causes and effects of institutions spanning from the micro to the macro level. The pioneering […]
By Matthew T. Cole (California Polytechnic State University), Ronald B. Davies (University College Dublin), and Todd Kaplan (University of Exeter Business School and University of Haifa) Government procurement contracts are a large part of many economies, often accounting for 15-20% of GDP.[1] Given the significant size of these contracts and their public-sector nature, it is unsurprising that there […]
By Shushanik Hakobyan[1] (International Monetary Fund) With rising US trade protectionism against its major trading partners, the Generalized System of Preferences or GSP, a long-running scheme of tariff exemptions meant to aid exporters in developing countries, may get less attention. While GSP imports account for about one percent of total US imports, they account for about […]
By Wenya Cheng (University of Glasgow) and John Morrow (Birkbeck, University of London) Although firms may face radically different production conditions, this dimension of firm heterogeneity is often overlooked. A number of studies document large and persistent differences in productivity across both countries and firms.[1] However, these differences remain largely ‘some sort of measure of […]
By Reshad N Ahsan (University of Melbourne) and Arpita Chatterjee (University of New South Wales) Economic globalization is currently under threat from a populist political backlash. A common narrative is that this backlash is partly a result of a trade-induced increase in inequality.[1] In our recent research, we show that the same mechanism that causes […]
By Roberto Bonfatti (University of Nottingham) and Kevin Hjortshøj O’Rourke (University of Oxford) World trade has increased tremendously in recent decades, driven by the rise of China and other emerging economies. The reliance of world trade on choke points (such as the Strait of Hormuz, the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea) creates the need for […]
By Beata Javorcik (University of Oxford), Alessia Lo Turco, (Marche Polytechnic University), Daniela Maggioni (University of Catania) Recently, there has been a renewal of interest in industrial policy across the world. Advanced economies promise to use industrial policy to revive their declining manufacturing, while emerging markets hope that industrial policies will help them upgrade their […]