Trade Policy and Economic Growth: A Skeptic's Guide to Cross-National Evidence / Francisco Rodriguez, Dani Rodrik.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rodríguez, Francisco, 1970-

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Rodrik, Dani.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w7081.

NBER working paper series no. w7081

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Trade Policy and Economic Growth

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1999.

Summary:

Do countries with lower policy-induced barriers to international trade grow faster, once other relevant country characteristics are controlled for? There exists a large empirical literature providing an affirmative answer to this question. We argue that methodological problems with the empirical strategies employed in this literature leave the results open to diverse interpretations. In many cases, the indicators of openness' used by researchers are poor measures of trade barriers or are highly correlated with other sources of bad economic performance. In other cases, the methods used to ascertain the link between trade policy and growth have serious shortcomings. Papers that we review include Dollar (1992), Ben-David (1993), Sachs and Warner (1995), and Edwards (1998). We find little evidence that open trade policies--in the sense of lower tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade--are significantly associated with economic growth.

Notes:

Print version record

April 1999.