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Using a panel of firm-level data, this paper assesses the effects of Cameroon's trade liberalization in the late 1980s and early 1990s on firm productivity growth in the manufacturing sector. A two-step approach is employed. First, a single production function for the whole manufacturing sector is run on the pooled sample of pre-and post-reform periods as well as separately on the pre-and immediately post-reform periods using the Levinsohn and Petrin methodology, and firm productivity indexes are derived. Second, the correlation between trade liberalization and firm productivity growth rates is examined in a regression framework. We focus on the interaction between trade liberalization shocks and firm, industry and environment characteristics. We find a systematic shift in the firm productivity distributions from the pre- to post-liberalization periods in the direction of higher productivity. The manufacturing sector total factor productivity drops in the pre-reform and improves considerably in the post-reform periods. The estimations using pooled pre-and post-liberalization as well as sub-periods firm productivity growth rates show that reductions in effective protection and, even more, increases in export shares are the principal mechanisms of firm productivity improvements. Interestingly, firm, industry and business environment characteristics such as capital intensity, size, age, age squared, competition across industries, and political instability appear to have no influence on the effect of trade liberalization on firm productivity growth.

[2], 68 p. ; Errata: p. 68. ; Reproduction of original in the Huntington Library.

Trade policy reforms in recent decades have sharply reduced the distortions that were harming agriculture in developing countries. Yet global trade in farm products continues to be far more distorted than trade in nonfarm goods, and in ways that reduce some forms of poverty and inequality but worsen others, so the net effects are unclear without empirical modeling. Using a new set of estimates of agricultural price distortions, this book brings together economy-wide global and national empirical studies that focus on the net effects of the remaining distortions to world merchandise trade on po

For decades, earnings from farming in many developing countries have been depressed by a pro-urban, anti-agricultural bias in own-country policies as well as by governments of richer countries favouring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies reduced national and global economic welfare, inhibited economic growth and added to inequality and poverty because no fewer than three-quarters of the world's billion poorest people still depend directly or indirectly on farming for their livelihood (World Bank,2007). During the past two to three decades, numerous developing country governments have reduced their sectoral and trade policy distortions, whereas some high-income countries also have begun reforming their protectionist farm policies. Yet myriad policy measures continue to distort world food markets, and in many and complex ways (Anderson, 2009). ; The authors are grateful for funding from World Bank Trust Funds provided by the governments of the Netherlands (BNPP) and the United Kingdom (DfID) and from the Australian Research Council.

Reforms in recent decades have sharply reduced the distortions affecting agriculture in developing countries, particularly by cuts to agricultural export taxes and by some reductions in government assistance to agriculture in high-income countries, but international trade in farm products continues to be far more distorted than trade in nonfarm goods. This paper summarizes a series of empirical studies that focus on the effects of the remaining distortions to world merchandise trade for poverty and inequality, especially in developing countries. To obtain different insights into the various impacts, two global studies are undertaken using the World Bank's Linkage model, one multi-country study uses the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model, and ten country case studies are also included, each using a national economy-wide model. The Linkage model results suggest that liberalization will reduce international inequality, largely by boosting farm incomes and raising real wages for unskilled workers in developing countries, and will reduce the number of poor people worldwide by 3 percent. The analysis based on the GTAP model for a sample of 15 countries, and the ten stand-alone national case studies, all point to larger reductions in poverty, especially if only the non-poor are subjected to increased income taxation to compensate for the loss of trade tax revenue.