Liberalising Foreign Trade through Rose-Tinted Glasses
The foreign trade sector has a crucial role to play in economic development trade has variously been described as the 'engine' or 'handmaiden' of growth. This key role has stimulated a great deal of interest in the links between trade and growth, with the links between trade orientation and exports, and exports and growth receiving particularly close attention.' Alongside this time-series work there have been a number of multi-country studies of trade policy in developing countries those of Krueger (i 98 I) and Balassa (i 982) are perhaps the best known. Most of this work has been directed at two questions. First, what does the structure of protection look like in a given developing country? Second, are there clear links between the structure of protection, trade orientation and economic performance? It is widely believed in developing countries that the major lending agencies, the World Bank in particular, perceive a clear link between trade orientation and economic performance and that this explains why around three quarters ofall conditions which attach to structural adjustment loans (SALs) feature reform of trade policy. The editors of Liberalising Foreign Trade, Demetrious Papageorgiou, Michael Michaely and Armeane Choksi, all of whom are on the World Bank staff, clearly believe this to be the case, judging from their opening statement: 'The benefits of open trading have by now been sufficiently demonstrated and described by economic historians"and analysts. In this study we take them for granted and turn our minds from the "whether" to the "how"' (Vol. i, p. vii). In other words 'It is... the timing, phasing and sequencing involved in the design and implementation of a trade liberalisation policy that forms the subject matter of the present study.' (Vol. 7, p. I ). Liberalising Foreign Trade is a World Bank organised study which describes and evaluates 36 liberalisation episodes in i 9 countries during the period I950-I982. The study is ambitious in scale28 authors, 3 editors, 7 volumes and almost 3,ooo pages of text. It is the most comprehensive cross-country analysis of liberalisation episodes undertaken. From a policy perspective a study of this scale is potentially of considerable interest, given the liberalisations