Over the last four decades, many developing countries have initiated reforms to lower barriers to trade. Yet, despite these reforms, developing countries still remain far less open than developed ones, raising the question: what are the barriers to international trade?
In many developing countries tariffs remain high, alongside the issues of weak contract and regulatory enforcement, inadequate transport infrastructure, search frictions, and a plethora of other distortions that are more severe in the developing world, impacting the development of international trade.
This VoxDevLit summarises a broad set of empirical work that explores the impact of international trade with developing countries (including India and Kenya) that are characterised by weak institutions, market failures and firm distortions. For each of these categories we ask how the effects of international trade policy may differ in the presence of such frictions, how trade may moderate or exacerbate the friction itself, and how international trade policies should respond in the light of the answers to the first two questions.
International Trade: Presentation of key takeaways
For the launch event, Senior Editors David Atkin and Amit Khandelwal joined us to outline the key takeaways from this VoxDevLit, highlighting policy relevant results from recent research at the intersection of international trade and development.