Foreign Trade Regimes and Economic Development. Vol. X: Liberalization Attempts and Consequences

This is one of two volumes concluding a most ambitious study of trade policy in ten developing countries, carried out by the National Bureau of Economic Research. (Individual volumes have been reviewed as they appeared). Professor Krueger, a co-director of the project, here focuses on devaluation and the effect of the liberalization of trade and payments regimes on growth and the allocation of resources. There are too many factors at work to permit highly condensed generalization, but the evidence (as in the companion volume by co-director Jagdish Bhagwati, noted in Foreign Affairs, Spring 1979) suggests that when governments take export promotion seriously they correct or avoid some costly errors.