 Once More into the Breach: Economic Growth and IntegrationNo 34, Working Papers from Center for Global Development Abstract: This paper re-examines the evidence linking poor growth during the era of import substituting industrialization with trade restrictions. Recent work, notably Rodriguez and Rodrik (2000), asserts that all the evidence is fragile, implying that economists who believe that trade restrictions played a role in this poor performance do so largely on faith. This paper argues that this criticism ignores crucial evidence and tests regression specifications that are either not relevant for the question or are bound to have low statistical power. After revising and updating measures of trade openness used in Sachs and Warner (1995), the weight of the evidence argues that trade restrictions were indeed harmful to growth during this period. While there is certainly room for debate about how best to use the available data on trade restrictions, a large number of variants yield strong and consistent results. Furthermore, although some assert that it is impossible to empirically distinguish measures of trade restriction from other policies or institutions, the findings are not diminished even after controlling for many alternative economic policies or institutions. Keywords: import substitution; trade; economic growth; integration (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cgd:wpaper:34 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from Center for Global Development Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.