Année
2012
Abstract
Understanding the growth-inducing effects of trade liberalization requires a thorough understanding of the policies and processes underlying export diversification. How does government policy that explicitly engages in trade liberalization affect the process of export diversification in the econ-omy? Furthermore, conditional on such policy, what are the directions in which exports diversify? This paper seeks to examine these questions by exploiting a directed policy effort by Syria to liberalize its trading sector beginning in 2001. The primary advantage offered by the Syrian case is that the policy in question was largely prompted by a political decision, reached independently of contemporaneous structural changes in the econ-omy. As a consequence, Syrian trade liberalization can be analyzed under a quasi-experimental setting, which helps identify the effect of the policy on actual diversification outcomes.
LIM, J. et SABOROWSKI, C. (2012). Export Diversification in a Transitioning Economy: The Case of Syria. Economics of Transition, 20(2), pp. 339-367.