This paper examines the e↵ects of liquidity on the demand for imports of non-durable consumers’ goods in Trinidad and Tobago. A parsimonious vector equilibrium correction model (VEqCM) is used to test the hypotheses that liquidity has both longand short-run e↵ects. The multivariate cointegration approach of Johansen and Juselius (1990) is used to determine long-run relations and general to spec...

This paper provides empirical evidence for the interaction between firm-level total factor productivity and trade liberalization as key determinants of firm-level job destruction caused by trade. We also test some key theoretical predictions from Melitz (2003), whose model is used to derive an explicit equation relating firm productivity and trade-induced labor layoff when a country liberalizes...

This paper begins with a discussion of the role played by upgrading in the promotion of sustainable growth. Upgrading is discussed in two different contexts, that of industrial clusters and that of global value chains (GVCs). Drawing on global and African experiences, the paper addresses the upgrading agenda required to enable dynamic clusters to meet both domestic needs and progressively also ...

This paper deals with the quantification of GMO regulations on bilateral trade flows. A composite index of the ‘complexity’ of such regulations for sixty countries as well as an ‘objective’ score for six GMO regulatory sub-dimensions has been developed. Using a gravity model, we show how bilateral ‘similarity’ in GMO regulations, affect trade flows for the composite index and its components. Re...

This paper investigates the two-way relationship between R&D and export activity. In particular, we concern ourselves with the question whether R&D stimulates exports and, perhaps more importantly, whether export activity leads to increasing innovative activity in terms of R&D (learning by exporting). We use two unique firm level databases for Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland and compa...

Can part of Africa’s current underdevelopment be explained by its slave trades? To explore this question empirically, I combined data from ship records with data from various historical documents reporting slave ethnicities, and construct estimates of the number of slaves exported from each country during Africa’s slave trades between 1400 and 1900. I find a strong robust negative correlation b...

This paper discusses the political economy behind the principal trade policy decisions in Russia since independence. I discuss why export restraints were widely employed in the early transition years and why the export quotas proved more difficult to remove than anticipated. Why it was so difficult to resolve the monetary basis for the collapse in trade among the newly independent states. Why t...

We study the effects of reforms in the legal scope of patent rights (PRs) on the international pattern of sectoral exports, before and after implementation of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement at the World Trade Organization (WTO), in a generalized factor-proportions framework. We find that, conditional on factor endowments and intensities, a country wi...

China and ASEAN have been maintaining a relationship both cooperative and competitive in the textile trade. Due to its labor intensive feature and high dependence on foreign trade , the textile trade has received much attention after the 2008 financial crisis. The customs data (classified by the HS code) from year 2006-2009 is employed to research the impact of the crisis on the trade pattern o...

INTRA-INDUSTRY TRADE AS AN INDICATOR OF LABOR MARKET ADJUSTMENT A growing body of recent empirical research uses measures of change in intra-industry trade as indicators of labor market adjustment. In this paper, we argue that the theoretical foundations for this work are problematic. To make this argument we develop a simple model with both interand intra-industry trade and adjustment. We defi...