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Prolonged worldwide economic depression forces some economists and policy makers to demand tougher regulation to protect their domestic economy. If implemented, this may lead to a high-tariff regime that ruled the pre-globalised world economy. This paper examines the consequences of a tariff protected trade regime. It takes up the case of trade misreporting phenomena under the framework of protected regime. It builds up a basic trade mis-invoicing model and then develops collusion between underreporting traders of partner countries. I show that high tariff barrier gives incentives not only to the importers but also to the exporters to gain by underreporting the trade statistics. Interestingly, this paper shows that even if foreign exchange is fully floated, underground foreign exchange market can be created and exporters may rationally underreport without any gain through black market premium – a departure from conventional theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent trade negotiations, both at the regional and multilateral level, have seen a resurgence of the issue of trade and labour standards. Labour interests in high-standards countries argue that low labour standards are an unfair source of comparative advantage, and that increasing imports from low-standards countries will have an adverse impact on wages and working conditions in high-standards countries, thus leading to a race to the bottom of standards. For low-standards countries, there is the fear that this is just a form of disguised protectionism and that the imposition of high labour standards upon them is equally unfair since it will erode their competitiveness, the latter being largely based on labour costs. Our objective in the present paper is to cast some light on the above debate from both a theoretical and empirical perspective. In particular, we first discuss some possible theoretical links between labour standards and comparative advantage through their effects on the terms of trade. We then investigate empirically the relationship between labour standards, comparative advantage and export performance. Overall, our empirical results suggest that caution should be exercised before drawing broad conclusions on the magnitude and direction of these effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between trade and growth has been central to development economics with particular emphasis on the export-growth dynamic. The current paper is in the tradition of this literature but develops two new strands. First, it examines the exportsgrowth link in a dynamic fashion, providing a more rigorous approach than has been attempted previously. Second it explores the role of export composition in determining growth performance. By constructing a panel of 69 countries and using the dynamic model, the results generated suggest that there is a strong positive relationship between exports and growth. Further, it is apparent that the composition of those exports is important in determining the strength of growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to examine the causal relationship between export instability, income terms of trade instability, investment and economic growth by using the cointegration analysis and the multivariate error correction model. In addition, reverse causality is also tested by examining whether output and investment cause export instability and income terms of trade instability. The data utilized are drawn from a sample of 14 developing nations. The cointegration results indicate that export and income terms of trade instability have long-run relationships with output. For most countries, instability in the income terms of trade is negatively related to output while the results for export instability are mixed. With respect to causality, it seems that export instability and income terms of trade instability play a causal role in the development process via a variety of avenues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the link between trade and fertility in developing countries. Household fertility is determined by the time cost of children. Women working in the manufacturing sector face a higher time cost, and hence desire fewer children than women working in the agricultural sector. If the developing country has a comparative advantage in labour-intensive manufactures, then trade raises the demand for female labour in the manufacturing sector, thus lowering fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical review of current research on formal modelling of the political economy of policy reform. It ultimately argues that, due to the complexity of policy reform situations, at least as currently constructed, these models do not possess sufficient systematic content to form the basis of empirical research or policy advice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]