Examining the correlation between trade and income cannot identify the direction of causation between the two. Countries’ geographic characteristics, however, have important effects on trade, and are plausibly uncorrelated with other determinants of income. This paper therefore constructs measures of the geographic component of countries’ trade, and uses those measures to obtain instrumental va...

______________________________________________________________________ The growth in the trade share of output is one of the most important features of the world economy since World War II. We show that an important propagation mechanism for this growth is vertical specialization. Simply put, vertical specialization occurs when imported inputs are used to produce goods that are then exported. W...

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expresse...

The poor are known as asnaf and this group of people is often prioritized in the distribution zakat. However, poverty remains a major issue country's socioeconomic development continues to shackle community. study sought identify various issues among asnaf, well determine mechanism used by Kedah State Zakat Board (LZNK) address these issues. Data were gathered through interviews with LZNK manag...