How important is trade for poverty reduction? Can trade liberalisation promote growth?
Is this growth pro-poor? These questions have been widely analysed in policy and academic circles for many decades. Twenty years ago, proponents of change and reform argued that trade liberalisation would promote growth and thereby poverty reduction, if accompanied by a number of other domestic reforms. As developing countries advanced in the implementation of trade liberalising policies, academics revisited the debate. Most agreed that although there had been substantial trade liberalisation in the last 20 years, growth had not been as strong as expected in some cases. A large variety of explanations were proposed. In a 2003 essay titled Trade, Growth and Poverty: A Selective Survey , Anne Krueger and Andrew Berg conducted a selective literature review that surveyed recent contributions to the debate and concluded that: “Evidence from a variety of sources… supports the view that trade openness contributes greatly to growth. Moreover, trade openness does not have systematic effects o
