Trade Policy and Economic Growth: A Sceptic's Guide to the Cross-National Evidence

Francisco Rodríguez and Dani Rodrik

No 2143, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Economic Growth; Trade Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-05
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (168)

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Related works:
Chapter: Trade Policy and Economic Growth: A Skeptic's Guide to the Cross-National Evidence (2001)
Working Paper: Trade Policy and Economic Growth: A Skeptic's Guide to Cross-National Evidence (1999)
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