Suchergebnisse

Abstract South‐South trade agreements are proliferating. Yet the impact of these agreements is largely unknown, as existing North‐North and North‐South micro‐level studies are likely to yield misleading predictions for South‐South trade agreements. This paper estimates the impact of COMESA on Uganda's imports between 1994 and 2003. Detailed import and tariff data at the 6‐digit Harmonized System level are used for more than 1,000 commodities. Based on a difference‐in‐difference estimation strategy, the paper finds that – in contrast to evidence from aggregate statistics – COMESA's preferential tariff liberalization has not considerably increased Uganda's trade with member countries, on average, across sectors. The effect, however, is heterogeneous across sectors. Finally, the paper finds no evidence of trade‐diversion effects.

This paper assesses how pro-poor and inclusive Asia's recent growth has been, and what factors have been driving these outcomes. It finds that while poverty has fallen across the region over the last two decades, inequality has increased, dampening the impact of growth on poverty reduction. As a result, relative to other emerging and developing regions and to Asia's own past, the recent period of growth has been both less inclusive and less pro-poor. Our analysis suggests a number of policies that could help redress these trends and broaden the benefits of growth in Asia. These include fiscal policies to increase spending on health, education, and social safetynets; labor market reforms to boost the labor share of total income; and reforms to make financial systems more inclusive.