Two more World Bank papers:
Gonzalo Salinas and Ataman Aksoy: Growth before and after trade liberalization (World Bank working paper, November 2006):
The empirical study of the impact of trade liberalization has not convinced the skeptics about the economic gains after trade reforms. Some have even argued that trade reforms have led to economic collapse and to deindustrialization. Using a sample that excludes countries that were subject to major exogenous disruptions, the authors note that post-reform economic growth was 1.2 percentage points higher than before the reforms. This is remarkable considering that pre-reform periods were characterized by highly expansionary state policies and large external borrowing, and the crisis years that preceded trade liberalization in the comparisons are eliminated. Growth acceleration occurred irrespective of income per capita level and was quite significant in Sub-Saharan Africa. As expected, small countries benefited most from the reforms.
Aylin Isik-Dikmelik: Trade reforms and welfare : an ex-post decomposition of income in Vietnam (World Bank working paper, October 2006):
This paper analyzes the impact of trade reforms on household welfare. In particular, it studies the importance of each of the links that together constitute the impact using data from the Vietnamese experience in the 1990s. The implementation of trade reforms in the 1990s, most noteworthy of which was the liberalization of rice, resulted in substantial improvement in welfare as evidenced by the drastic decline in poverty. Using analytical and empirical methods, the author examines the role of each channel (direct versus indirect) in this improvement for different groups of households. Results indicate that the growth has been broad based and pro-poor. Poorer households experienced more growth for each and every group analyzed. And contrary to the standard literature, net buyer households had more growth compared with net sellers, emphasizing the importance of indirect links. Decomposition of the growth shows that for rural households, both the direct effect and the multiplier effect drive growth while the multiplier effect was key in urban areas.
Dear Ben,
I would like to take a minute to draw your attention to the second annual IFC - FT essay contest that might be of interests to the readers of your blog. For more info I attached two links: one to our own blog post and a second one to the official IFC announcement:
PSD Blog post: http://psdblog.worldbank.org/psdblog/2007/05/writing_for_dev.html
Official Web site: http://www.ifc.org/competition
Please let me know if you have any questions. I appreciate any help in publicizing this event.
Sincerely,
Chris Monasterski
Posted by: Chris Monasterski | May 11, 2007 at 01:38 PM