Do countries with lower policy-induced barriers to international trade grow faster, once other relevant country characteristics are controlled for? There exists a large 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 reserchers 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.
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Paper provided by University of Maryland, Department of Economics in its series Electronic Working Papers with number
99-003.
Length: Date of creation: Apr 1999 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:umd:umdeco:99-003
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