Social trust can facilitate access to alternative sources of finance to firms when formal finance is scarce or entails large transaction costs, especially in economies with less developed financial systems. Since exporting firms are relatively more dependent on external finance, we find that...

This research assesses the effects of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards in international trade by introducing a new concept, bridge to cross (BTC), with product standards. The BTC in this paper is the regulatory gap between the exporting and importing countries with regard to any...

Social attitudes (beliefs) are increasingly being recognized as factors that are important in determination of the outcomes that interests economists. In the United States as Glaeser and Ward (2006) have shown, the differences in beliefs on social issues such as acceptability of legal abortion...

We hypothesize that exports of differentiated products, which entail greater upfront costs, increase more as financial reforms take place. We find strong and robust empirical support of this hypothesis with a comprehensive set of measures of reforms encompassing the banking sector, interest...

This research assesses the effects of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards in international trade by introducing a new concept, bridge to cross (BTC), with product standards. The BTC in this paper is the regulatory gap between the exporting and importing countries with regard to any...

This research assesses the effects of mycotoxins regulations on international trade flows. Mycotoxins regulations reflected in the mandatory maximum residue limits impose costs on the producers that could take the form of both variable and fixed costs. Little empirical research exists on the...

This paper describes the United States recently enacted Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and assesses its quantitative impact on African exports. The AGOA expands the scope of preferential access of Africa's exports to the United States in key areas such as clothing. However, its medium...

In this paper we investigate the role of poultry in the livelihoods portfolios of households and the impact of supply and demand shocks that may be caused by Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) on various livelihoods outcomes of households in four Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. The...

Do the economic effects of potential avian flu outbreaks justify policy attention and resource allocation in a poor country like Ethiopia? We address this question by assessing both economywide (macro-level) economic impacts and household (micro-level) livelihood impacts that might be caused by...