Morocco is about to start implementing an Association Agreement with the European Union (AAEU) at the same time as the country adjusts its trade policies to conform to WTO rules. A major policy question facing Morocco's policy makers is whether and to what extent they should pursue additional unilateral trade liberalization. Given that Morocco's agriculture currently enjoys substantial protecti...

Available online 8 October 2011 We examine the effects of trade and services liberalization on wage inequality in India. We find that labor reallocations and wage shifts attributable to liberalization account for at most 29% of the increase in inequality between 1993 and 2004, and that the effects of services reforms are many times larger than those of trade liberalization. In contrast, 30–66% ...

This study examines the response of merchandise export to real exchange rate-based trade liberalization in Sub-Saharan Africa between 1980 and 2005. This is because the last two decades have witnessed a significant fall in trade barriers across many SSA countries in an attempt to boost exports and foster economic growth. The panel least squares estimation technique was adopted for the study. In...

Empirical work relating trade liberalization and income distribution has identified an important anomaly. The Stolper-Samuelson theorem predicts that trade liberalization will shift income toward a country’s abundant factor. For developing countries, this suggests liberalization will principally benefit the abundant unskilled labor. Yet extensive empirical studies have identified many cases wit...

BACKGROUND Trade and investment liberalization (trade liberalization) can promote or harm health. Undoubtedly it has contributed, although unevenly, to Asia's social and economic development over recent decades with resultant gains in life expectancy and living standards. In the absence of public health protections, however, it is also a significant upstream driver of non-communicable diseases ...

This paper examines time series evidence to establish a link between trade, economic growth and income inequality in Bangladesh. The empirical results from a Vector Autoregression (VAR) model suggest that there is some evidence of trade liberalization accelerating growth in Bangladesh. Trade openness promotes investment. We find little evidence of trade affecting income distribution or of incom...

This paper reviews the theoretical and the empirical literature on regionalism. The formation of regional trade agreements has been, by far, the most popular form of reciprocal trade liberalization in the last fifteen years. The discriminatory character of these agreements has raised three main concerns: that trade diversion would be rampant, because special interest groups would induce governm...