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Amelia Santos‐Paulino, A.P. Thirlwall, Trade Liberalisation and Economic Performance in Developing Countries – Introduction, The Economic Journal, Volume 114, Issue 493, February 2004, Pages F1–F3, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0013-0133.2004.00184.x
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Extract
One of the most prominent features of the world economy over the last fifty years, and particularly in the last twenty years, has been the liberalisation of international trade and payments under the auspices of the GATT (and now the WTO), the IMF and the World Bank (as part of conditionality and Structural Adjustment Programmes). This is one of the reasons why world trade has grown nearly five times faster than world output and probably why the GDP of most countries has generally been impressive by historical standards, at least compared to the miserable experience of the years between the two great wars.
The purpose of this Feature is to explore in depth some aspects and consequences of the liberalisation process that affect the overall economic performance of countries, and the welfare of peoples within countries. There has been a good deal of work on the relation between trade liberalisation and economic growth, which has recently come under critical scrutiny from Rodriguez and Rodrick (2000), but much less work on other aspects of liberalisation such as the monetary (balance of payments) consequences of trade liberalisation and the impact of liberalisation on income inequality and the wage structure in developing countries. Moreover, what are the necessary economic and institutional conditions for liberalisation to be ‘successful’ in enhancing economic performance and the welfare of people?
