Sachs 1995

Economic Reform and the Process of Global Integration
Author(s): Jeffrey D. Sachs, Andrew Warner, Anders Åslund and Stanley Fischer
Source: Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Vol. 1995, No. 1, 25th Anniversary Issue
(1995), pp. 1-118
Published by: Brookings Institution Press
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JEFFREY D. SACHS
Harvard University
ANDREW WARNER
Harvard University
Economic Reform and the Process

of Global Integration
WHEN THE BROOKINGS Panel on Economic Activity began in 1970, the

world economy roughly accorded with the idea of three distinct eco-
nomic systems: a capitalist first world, a socialist second world, and a
developing third world which aimed for a middle way between the first
two. The third world was characterized not only by its low levels of per
capita GDP, but also by a distinctive economic system that assigned the
state sector the predominant role in industrialization, although not the
monopoly on industrial ownership as in the socialist economies.
The years between 1970 and 1995, and especially the last decade,
have witnessed the most remarkable institutional harmonization and
economic integration among nations in world history. While economic
integration was increasing throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the extent of
integration has come sharply into focus only since the collapse of com-
munism in 1989. In 1995 one dominant global economic system is emerg-
ing. The common set of institutions is exemplified by the new World
Trade Organization (WTO), which was established by agreement of
more than 120 economies, with almost all the rest eager to join as rapidly
as possible. Part of the new trade agreement involves a codification of
basic principles governing trade in goods and services. Similarly, the In-
ternational Monetary Fund (IMF) now boasts nearly universal member-
ship, with member countries pledged to basic principles of currency
convertibility.
Most programs of economic reform now underway in the developing
world and in the post-communist world have as their strategic aim the
1

2 Brookings Paper-s on Economic Activity, 1:1995
integration of the national economy with the world economy. Integra-

tion means not only increased market-based trade and financial flows,
but also institutional harmonization with regard to trade policy, legal
codes, tax systems, ownership patterns, and other regulatory arrange-
ments. In each of these areas, international norms play a large and often
decisive role in defining the terms of the reform policy. Most recently,
China made commitments on international property rights and trade pol-
icy with a view toward membership in the WTO, and membership in the
world system more generally. Russian economic reforms are similarly
guided by the overall aim of reestablishing the country's place within the
world market system. In several sections of its April 1995 agreement
with the IMF, the Russian government commits to abide by WTO princi-
ples, even in advance of membership.
The goal of this paper is to document the process of global integration
and to assess its effects on economic growth in the reforming countries.
Using cross-country indicators of trade openness as the measures of
each country's orientation to the world economy, we examine the timing
of trade liberalization, and the implications of trade liberalization for
subsequent growth and for the onset or avoidance of economic crises.
Of course, trade liberalization is usually just one part of a government's
overall reform plan for integrating an economy with the world system.
Other aspects of such a program almost always include price liberaliza-
tion, budget restructuring, privatization, deregulation, and the installa-
tion of a social safety net. Nonetheless, the international opening of the
economy is the sine qua non of the overall reform process. Trade liberal-
ization not only establishes powerful direct linkages between the econ-
omy and the world system, but also effectively forces the government to
take actions on the other parts of the reform program under the pres-
sures of international competition. For these reasons, it is convenient
and fairly accurate to gauge a country's overall reform program ac-
cording to the progress of its trade liberalization.
Our analysis helps to answer several debates concerning cross-coun-
try growth patterns. Most important, we help to resolve the widely dis-
cussed conundrum concerning economic convergence in the world
economy. Long-held judgments about the development process, as well
as the workhorse formal models of economic growth, suggest that
poorer countries should tend to grow more rapidly than richer countries
and therefore should close the proportionate income gap over time. The

Jeffrey D. Sachs and Andrew Warner 3
main reason for expecting economic convergence is that the poorer

countries can import capital and modern technologies from the wealth-
ier countries, and thereby reap the "advantages of backwardness." Yet
in recent decades, there has been no overall tendency for the poorer
countries to catch up, or converge, with the richer countries.
We show that this problem is readily explained by the trade regime:
open economies tend to converge, but closed economies do not. The
lack of convergence in recent decades results from the fact that the
poorer countries have been closed to the world. This is now changing
with the spread of trade liberalization programs, so that presumably the
tendencies toward convergence will be markedly strengthened. The
power of trade to promote economic convergence is perhaps the most
venerable tenet of classical and neoclassical economics, dating back to
Adam Smith. As Smith's followers have stressed for generations, trade
promotes growth through a myriad channels: increased specialization,
efficient resource allocation according to comparative advantage, diffu-
sion of international knowledge through trade, and heightened domestic
competition as a result of international competition. I
This paper has three main parts. In the first section we discuss the
patterns and chronology of trade policy reforms in the postwar period.
Viewed from the perspective of world economic history since 1850, the
closed nature of the world trading system at the end of World War II was
a historical anomaly. The open trade of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries had collapsed following two world wars and a global
depression. Postwar liberalization has painstakingly restored an open
trading system somewhat reminiscent of the world in 1900, with two cru-
cial differences. First, developing countries in Africa and Asia are now
sovereign, rather than colonies of the Western powers. Second, the
world economy is increasingly supported by international commercial
law agreed to by individual governments and implemented with the sup-
port of international institutions such as the WTO and the IMF.
1. Lucas (1988) and Young (1991) observe that standard trade theory predicts an effect
of openness on the level, not the long-run growth rate, of GDP. Of course, a level effect
can appear as a growth effect for long periods of time, since adjustments in real economies
may take place over decades. Some recent theory has introduced various forms of increas-
ing returns to scale with the result that openness can affect long-term growth as well as the
level of income. See Young (1991), Grossman and Helpman (1991), Eicher (1993), and Lee
(1993).

4 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 1:1995
The second section examines the impact of postwar trade liberaliza-

tion on economic performance in the developing countries. We demon-
strate the basic proposition that open trade leads to convergent rates of
growth, that is, to higher growth rates in poorer countries than in richer
countries. The importance of trade policy is demonstrated in several
cross-country growth equations in which we hold constant other deter-
minants of growth. We also show that open economies successfully
avoid balance-of-payments crises, while many closed economies even-
tually succumb to such crises.
The third section reviews the evidence on the success of trade liberal-
ization programs after 1980. First, we show that in many developing
countries trade liberalization has followed a severe macroeconomic cri-
sis (such as a debt crisis or very high inflation). A very few developing
countries have remained relatively open since World War II or since the
time of their independence-Barbados, Cyprus, Malaysia, Mauritius,
Singapore, Thailand, and the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen)-
but most of the others opened much later, mainly in the 1980s or 1990s,
and usually in response to a deep macroeconomic crisis.2 In many cases,
economic reform paid off after a few years in terms of accelerated
growth of GDP. This is true in all major regions of the world, including
sub-Saharan Africa. In a small number of countries, however, a new
economic crisis ensued after the start of full-fledged reforms. These set-
backs, in Chile in the early 1980s, Venezuela in the early 1990s, and
Mexico in late 1994, seem to be related to financial market liberalization
and exchange rate mismanagement.3
We also present evidence on the growth effects of reforms in the post-
communist countries of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Here too we find evidence that economic reforms lead to a renewal of
economic growth. Strong reformers seem to outperform weak reformers
both in terms of a smaller decline of GDP between 1990 and 1994, and
in terms of an earlier resumption of economic growth. The evidence is
necessarily fragmentary, however, given the very short period for in
which the reforms have been in operation.
2. Some developing countries, such as Peru, Sri Lanka, and several Central American
countries, were rather open at the end of World War II, but then moved into a prolonged
phase of import substitution in the 1950s and 1960s.
3. See Sachs, Tornell, and Velasco (1995) and Warner (1994) regarding the Mexican
crisis.

Liberalization and Global Integration before 1970
One and one-half centuries ago, two close observers of the capitalist
revolution in Western Europe made a pithy prediction about the course
of global economic change. Marx and Engels correctly sensed the un-
precedented efficiency of the industrial capitalism that had emerged.
They predicted that as a result of superior economic efficiency, capital-
ism would eventually sweep through the entire world, compelling other
societies to restructure along the lines of Western Europe. In the pun-
gent rhetoric of the Communist Manifesto they expostulated that:
The bourgeoisie,by the rapidimprovementof all instrumentsof production,by
the immenselyfacilitatedmeans of communication,draws all, even the most
barbarian,nationsinto civilization.The cheap prices of its commoditiesare the
heavy artillerywithwhich it battersdown all Chinesewalls, with whichit forces
the barbarians'intenselyobstinatehatredof foreignersto capitulate.It compels
all nations, on pain of extinction,to adoptthe bourgeoismode of production;it
compels them to introducewhat it calls civilizationinto their midst, i.e., to be-
come bourgeoisthemselves. In one word, it createsa worldafterits own image.4
Marx and Engels got much disastrously wrong in their predictions,
but they correctly sensed the decisive global implications of capitalism.
As they foresaw, capitalism eventually spread to nearly the entire
world, in a complex and sometimes violent process that dramatically
raised worldwide living standards but also provoked social upheaval and
war. It is often forgotten today, in the flush of the communist collapse
after 1989, that global capitalism has emerged twice, at the end of the
nineteenth century as well as the end of the twentieth century. The ear-
lier global capitalist system peaked around 1910 but subsequently disin-
tegrated in the first half of the twentieth century, between the outbreak
of World War I and the end of World War II. The reemergence of a
global, capitalist market economy since 1950, and especially since the
mid-1980s, in an important sense reestablishes the global market econ-
omy that had existed one hundred years earlier.
The first episode of global capitalism, of course, came about as much
through the instruments of violent conquest and colonial rule as through
economic reform and the development of international institutions.
Starting around 1840, Western European powers wielded their superior
4. Marx and Engels (1948, p. 225).

industrial-and hence military-power to challenge traditional societies

around the world. France began to colonize North Africa in the 1830s
and 1840s; Britain forced its way into China in the Opium Wars,
1839-42; Britain and France defeated Russia in the Crimean War,
1854-56; and Britain completed the conquest of India in 1857. Among
the populous societies of Asia and Near East, only Japan was able to
mobilize social and political institutions to support market reforms, im-
plementing history's first "shock therapy" reforms following the 1868
Meiji Restoration.s
By the 1870s a global market had begun to take shape on the following
economic lines. Western Europe and the United States constituted the
main industrial powers. A major push toward industrialization, espe-
cially in east-central Europe, followed the unification of Germany. Rus-
sia began a period of rapid industrialization, partly through the building
of foreign-financed railways across Russian Eurasia. Japan had begun
its dramatic opening to the world economy through the adoption of capi-
talist institutions and free trade. (Note that early Japanese industrializa-
tion took place entirely under free trade, since the dominant Western
powers imposed low Japanese tariff levels through "unequal treaties"
that lasted until the end of the century.) Latin America, after a half cen-
tury of postindependence upheaval, finally settled into market-based,
export-led growth in the 1870s, based on raw materials exports and capi-
tal imports (primarily for railroad construction). Africa, which lagged
farthest behind, was gobbled up by the Western European powers in an
orgy of imperial competition that reached its height between 1880 and
1910. Trade barriers remained low among these economies for several
decades, from the 1860s to 1914.6
5. See Jansen and Rozman (1988) for a detailed analysis of the economic, political, and
social reforms of the Meiji period.
6. The era of nineteenth-century free trade is usually dated from 1846, when Britain
unilaterally liberalized by repealing the Corn Laws. (In fact, liberalization had begun ear-
lier, with the abolition of export duties in 1842 and the reduction of import duties in 1842
and 1845.) The next decisive step was the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty of 1860, which liberal-
ized British-French trade. The new German Reich was established by Bismarck on free
trade principles and low tariffs in the early 1870s. It is often suggested that this free trade
era ended in 1879 with a renewed wave of protectionism, starting with Bismarck's accep-
tance of the famous tariff of bread and iron, which raised imports duties on agriculture
and steel. Higher tariffs soon followed in France and Italy. In fact, even with these tariff
increases, average tariff rates remained low until World War I, and nontariff barriers (for
example, quotas and exchange controls) were virtually nonexistent. According to data
assembled by Capie (1983, table 1.3, p. 8), average tariff revenues as a percentage of total

As in the late twentieth century, the emergence of the first global sys-
tem was based on the interaction of technology and economic institu-
tions. Long-distance transport and communications achieved break-
throughs similar to those in the present.7 The Suez Canal, completed in
1869, and the Panama Canal, completed in 1914, dramatically cut inter-
national shipping times, as did the progressive development of faster
and larger steamships from the 1840s. New railways in India, Russia, the
United States, and Latin America-often built with foreign finance-
opened vast, fertile territories for settlement and economic develop-
ment. The spread of telegraph lines and transoceanic cables from the
1850s linked the world at electronic speed. Military innovations, partic-
ularly the breech-loading rifle in the 1840s, combined with mass-produc-
tion made possible by industrialization, decisively shifted the military
advantage to Europe. Medical advances, particularly the use of quinine
as a preventative against malaria, played a pivotal role in the spread of
European settlements, domination, and investment, especially in Af-
rica. Without doubt, these technological breakthroughs were as revolu-
tionary in underpinning the emerging global system as those of our own
age.
On the economic level, key institutions similarly spread on a global
scale. International gold and silver standards became nearly universal
after the 1870s, eventually embracing North and South America, Eu-
rope, Russia, Japan, China, as well as other European colonies and inde-
pendent countries. By 1908 roughly 89 percent of the world's population
lived in countries with convertible currencies under the gold or silver
standard.8 Basic legal institutions, such as business and commercial
imports stayed below 10 percent in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom; between
10 and 20 percent in Italy; between 20 and 30 percent in the United States; and between 20
and 40 percent in Russia.
7. See Headrick (1981).
8. See Eichengreen and Flandreau (1994, p. 9). The countries on the gold or silver stan-
dards in 1908 include, in Europe: United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy,
Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, and Romania; in North America: United States and
Canada; in Central America: Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, and
Costa Rica; in South America: Peru, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, and Argentina; in Asia and
the Pacific: India, China, Indonesia, Japan, Siam, Philippines, and Australia; and in the
Middle East: the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Persia. The national currencies were con-
vertible into gold in all cases except the following: Italy, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Nicara-
gua, Guatemala, Peru, Chile, Brazil, and Venezuela. The Italian and Austrian currencies
were stable though not convertible.

codes, were widely adopted. These were based on European models,

mainly the Napoleonic Code. New multilateral institutions were estab-
lished, such as the Universal Postal Union in 1878.
The system was highly integrative, as in the present. A network of
bilateral trade treaties kept protectionism in check in most countries (the
United States and Russia, where tariff rates were relatively high, being
the exceptions). Nations as diverse as Argentina and Russia struggled to
adjust their economic policies, and especially their financial policies, to
attract foreign investment, particularly for railway building. The adop-
tion of a stable currency tied to gold was seen as a key step in the strategy
of international integration. In Russia, Count Witte recalled how he out-
maneuvered the conservative tsarist court to introduce the gold stan-
dard at the end of the nineteenth century.9 In Latin America, liberal mar-
ket regimes stabilized under both democratic (Argentina and Chile) and
authoritarian (Brazil and Mexico) political regimes. In all four cases,
overall growth of GDP and exports was very rapid, indeed historically
unprecedented. India similarly enjoyed rapid export growth between
1870 and 1914, under British rule.
In a series of important papers, Jeffrey Williamson and his collabora-
tors have shown that the open international system at the end of the
nineteenth century produced an era of economic convergence. 10Periph-
eral countries in Europe, such as Ireland and the Scandinavian coun-
tries, experienced rapid growth that narrowed the gap in real wages with
the more advanced countries, the United Kingdom, France, and Ger-
many. Former European colonies in Latin America and the South Pa-
cific (Australia and New Zealand) similarly achieved convergent growth
rates based on export-led growth.
In a massive study of long-term growth in forty-one developing coun-
tries, Lloyd Reynolds similarly finds that the open international econ-
omy of 1850-1914 was crucial in promoting the onset of rapid economic
growth in much of the developing world outside of Europe and North
America.1I Reynolds notes that "politics apart, the main factor deter-
mining the timing of turning points has been a country's ability to partici-
pate effectively in the trade opportunities opened by expansion of the
world economy.""2 He then points out the wide range of countries that
9. See Owen (1994, pp. 15-16).

10. See Williamson (1992, 1993) and O'Rourke and Williamson (1994).
11. Reynolds (1985).
12. Reynolds (1985).

were indeed able to avail themselves of the burgeoning trade opportuni-

ties, including almost all of Latin America (with the exception of Vene-
zuela); much of Asia, including but not limited to Ceylon, Burma, Ma-
laya, Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines; and parts of Africa,
including Algeria, Nigeria, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Kenya, Uganda,
Tanganyika, and Southern Rhodesia.13
Surely the most famous evocation of this remarkable international
setting is given by Keynes in the opening pages of The Economic Conse-
quences of the Peace:
What an extraordinaryepisode in the economic progress of man that age was
whichcameto an end in August 1914! . . . The inhabitantof Londoncouldorder
by telephone, sippinghis morningtea in bed, the variousproductsof the whole
earth,in such quantityas he mightsee fit, and reasonablyexpect theirearly de-
livery upon his doorstep;he could at the same momentand by the same means
adventurehis wealthin the naturalresourcesand new enterprisesof any quarter
of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective
fruitsand advantages;or he could decide to couple the securityof his fortunes
with the good faith of the townspeople of any substantialmunicipalityin any
continentthat fancy or informationmightrecommend.He could secure forth-
with, if he wished it, cheap and comfortablemeans of transitto any countryor
climate without passportor other formality,could despatch his servantto the
neighbouringoffice of a bank for such supply of the precious metals as might
seem convenient, and could then proceed abroadto foreign quarters,without
knowledgeof their religion,language,or customs, bearingcoined wealth upon
his person, and wouldconsiderhimselfgreatlyaggrievedand muchsurprisedat
the least interference.But, most importantof all, he regardedthis stateof affairs
as normal,certain, and permanent,except in the directionof furtherimprove-
ment, and any deviationfromit as aberrant,scandalous,and avoidable.14
Keynes rightly intuited in 1919 that the Humpty Dumpty of world
markets and shared institutions would not soon be put back together in
the harsh peace that followed World War I. Indeed, the war and its after-
math laid waste to the emergent global capitalist system for more than
half a century. The financial underpinnings of the late-nineteenth-cen-
tury liberal order were not reestablished. British dominance in the inter-
national financial system was ended by the Great War, and neither U.S.
leadership nor international cooperation took its place."5 Financial in-
stability and the failure of the gold standard rocked the 1920s and con-
tributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The export-led growth of
13. Reynolds (1985, pp. 34-35).

14. Keynes (1919, pp. 6-7).
15. See Kindleberger (1973) and Eichengreen (1993).

the primary producers in Latin America and elsewhere was undermined

by low and unstable commodities prices in the 1920s, and then was dev-
astated by the Great Depression, which brought the utter collapse of the
terms of trade, intense protectionism in Europe and the United States,
and the end of capital inflows.
Political upheaval accompanied economic and military upheaval.
Most important was the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, and the
emergence of fascist states in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s
respectively. In Latin America, the traditional political power of the
landholders and mine owners was undermined by the collapse in the
terms of trade. The free trade regimes of the late nineteenth century
were replaced by a revolutionary regime in Mexico and authoritarian re-
gimes in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, that were heavily influenced by
the state planning of the communist and fascist regimes in the Soviet
Union and Europe. 16 Throughout the world, state planning, authoritari-
anism, and militarism competed with limited government and market-
based economies. Whether or not economic theory offered insights and
predictions about these alternative strategies, political leaders felt com-
pelled to push for new and radical experimentation.
The changing zeitgeist is again decisively captured by Keynes, in his
remarkable lecture "National Self-Sufficiency" delivered in Ireland in
1933, when the world was in the depths of the Great Depression. 17 In the
lecture, Keynes rejects the commitment to free trade and the interna-
tional harmonization of institutions, declaring the late-nineteenth-
century experience a massive, and apparently inevitable, failure. In
Keynes's view, the international system led to war, by stoking the com-
petition among the leading powers:
The protectionof a country'sexistingforeigninterests,the captureof new mar-
kets, the progressof economicimperialism-these are a scarcelyavoidablepart
of a scheme of thingswhich aims at the maximumof internationalspecialisation
and at the maximumgeographicaldiffusionof capitalwhereverits seat of own-
ership. 18
For this reason, countries are best linked by ideas and culture, not
economic and financial entanglements. Keynes writes:
I sympathise,therefore,with those who would minimise,ratherthanwith those
who would maximise,economic entanglementsbetween nations. Ideas, knowl-
16. See Thorp (1984) for very insightful essays on the country-by-country experience.
17. Keynes (1933).
18. Keynes (1933, p. 236).

edge, art, hospitality,travel-these are the thingswhich shouldof their nature

be international.But let goods be homespunwheneverit is reasonablyand con-
venientlypossible;and, above all, let financebe primarilynational.19
But perhaps more to the point, Keynes stressed, was the fact that
countries simply demanded the right to experiment with new economic
models, since the old ones no longer commanded respect and assent. He
joined the chorus for experimentation, vividly exemplifying the end of
intellectual faith in global capitalism by the 1930s:
The point is that there is no prospectfor the next generationof a uniformityof
economicsystems throughoutthe world,suchas existed, broadlyspeaking,dur-
ing the nineteenthcentury;that we all need to be as free as possible of interfer-
ence fromeconomic changeselsewhere, in orderto makeour own favouriteex-
perimentstowardsthe ideal social republicof the future;and that a deliberate
movementtowardsgreaternationalself-sufficiencyand economic isolationwill
makeour task easier, in so far as it can be accomplishedwithoutexcessive eco-
nomic cost.20
Ironically, while Keynes would fundamentally reverse course himself,
coming to see aggregate demand management and international institu-
tions such as the IMF as the linchpins of a renewed global capitalist sys-
tem, the genie of experimentation unleashed by the collapse of faith in
market institutions lived on to dominate most of the world through much
of the postwar era.
The Tripartite World after 1945
At the end of World War II, the international economic system was
in a shambles. International markets for trade in goods, services, and
financial assets were essentially nonexistent. International trade was de-
stroyed by currency inconvertibility and a web of protectionist mea-
sures stemming from the Great Depression and World War II. When the
IMF published its first comprehensive review of exchange rate arrange-
ments in 1950, only five countries had established freely convertible cur-
rencies under the standard of article VIII of the IMF Articles of
Agreement: the United States and four Latin American countries
pegged to the dollar, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Panama.2'
Switzerland, not then a member of the IMF, also had a convertible cur-
rency. The IMF characterized another four countries as having effec-
19. Keynes (1933, p. 236).
20. Keynes (1933, p. 241).
21. IMF, Annual Report on Exchange Restrictions, 1950.

Livelyconvertible currencies, even though they had not yet formally ac-
cepted the obligations of article VIII: Cuba, Dominican Republic,
Honduras, and Venezuela. As late as 1957, only two more countries had
established convertibility subject to article VIII: Canada and Haiti. The
members of the European Community established convertibility in
1958. Most other developing and socialist countries postponed the move
for decades.
While market-based economic linkages were methodically restored
among the leading countries during the 1950s, most of the world's popu-
lation lived in countries that chose fundamentally nonmarket economic
strategies for development. Roughly one-third of the world's population
lived in socialist countries (as measured by Kornai for the year 1986);
another 50 percent or so lived in countries where governments pro-
claimed a kind of "third way" between capitalism and socialism, state-
led industrialization (SLI).2
In figure 1, we show the time profile of the opening of the world econ-
omy in the postwar era, using the specific criteria for openness discussed
below and in the appendix. The world economy was essentially closed
after World War II, and only around 20 percent of the world's population
lived in open economies by 1960. It was not until 1993 that more than
60 percent of the world's GDP, and more than 50 percent of the world's
population, was located in open economies.23 The figure extends up to
1994, so that by our criteria, neither Russia nor China is part of the open
system. If both of these countries cross the threshold to openness (and
trade reforms in 1995 might well lead them to qualify), the proportion of
openness by population would jump another 30 percent, to reach around
87 percent of the world's population; and the proportion of openness by
GDP would jump by another 15 percent, to reach around 83 percent of
the world's GDP (using 1975 weights in both cases).
The governments of almost all the developing countries adopted
either socialist or SLI policies after World War II. This was true of the
22. The population in socialist countries is measured by Kornai (1992, pp. 6-7) for
1986. The population under SLI is based on the authors' calculations using data from Sum-
mers and Heston (1991).
23. Let PO, be the proportion of the world economies that are open in year t, as shown
in figure 1. PO, is constructed as PO, = IVt'75Djt -1, where Dit -1 is a dummy variable set
equal to one if the country is open as of year t - 1, and zero otherwise. W(75is the weight
of country i in the world in 1975. The weights are constructed using 1975 population data
and 1975 real GDP data from version 5.6 of the data in Summers and Heston (1991).

Figure 1. Share of Open Economies in the World, 1960-95a

Share
1.0
0.9 _
0.8 -
0.7-
0.6 -
By 1975 r-ealGDP ~
0.5 -
0.4 -
0.3 - By 1975 population
0.2 -------------------
0.-I
0.1
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995

Source: Authors' calculations. The weights are constructed using 1975 population data and 1975 real GDP data
from version 5.6 of the data in Summers and Heston (1991).
a. Let PO, be the proportion of the world's economies that are open in year t. PO, is constructed as POt =
7"'i75Di, ,, where Di,-, is a dummy variable set equal to one if the country is open as of year t- 1, and zero otherwise.
lt'M75 is the weight of country i in the world in 1975.
long-independent economies of Latin America as well as most of the

postcolonial countries of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia as they
gained independence. Of course, in the cases of Eastern Europe and the
Baltic states, these policies were imposed by the force of the Soviet
Union, rather than being the result of indigenous political decisions.
More generally, trade policies reflected a wide variety of economic
forces, intellectual beliefs, internal political economy, foreign policy
considerations, and other economic forces. While no summary can do
justice to the complex and myriad forces at play, it is important to review
them, if only to appreciate that socialist and SLI policies should be
understood mainly as "policy experiments" (albeit enormously mis-
taken and costly ones), rather than as inevitable consequences of the
economic structures of the countries in question.
INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC FORCES. Probably the most important
factor behind the advent of SLI policies after World War II was the col-
lapse of the world trading system itself. Since almost none of the richer

countries had convertible currencies or low external tariff rates, the gov-
ernment of any individual developing country naturally viewed its trad-
ing prospects with considerable skepticism. This "export pessimism"
was shared by a wide range of postwar economic analysts. Moreover,
since the value of trade liberalization generally depends on the openness
of potential trading partners, the choice of closed trading policies can
be understood, in part, as a kind of low-level trading equilibrium.24This
explanation helps to account for the delay in liberalization in most devel-
oping countries after World War II. It is not as helpful, however, in ex-
plaining the behavior of about one dozen countries (mainly in Central
and South America, as noted later) that were relatively open in the late
1940s, but closed up during the 1950s and early 1960s.25Nor does the
closed nature of the world economy in the late 1940s explain the persis-
tence of closed policies in developing countries even after the United
States, Canada, the European Community, and Japan had adopted more
outward policies in the 1960s. A full explanation must therefore look to
other factors.
MACROECONOMIC POLICIES. The roots of postwar currency incon-
vertibility at the end of World War II lay as much in macroeconomics as
in trade policy. Although exchange controls were introduced in many
countries during the Great Depression, the pressures of wartime infla-
tionary finance were probably an even greater factor in the spread of in-
convertibility. In country after country, government wartime purchases
were financed through inflationary finance (that is, government bor-
rowing from the central bank), coupled with domestic price controls,
foreign exchange controls, and extensive rationing of goods. By the end
of the war, there was an enormous overhang of nominal money balances
in most countries. In the British Commonwealth, for example, the In-
dian government held large reserves of sterling which were restricted in
use according to imperial monetary policy.
24. Rodriguez (1974), using a two-country model in which each country uses trade
quotas to shift the terms of trade in its favor, shows that zero trade is typically the Nash
equilibrium, since each country optimally responds to a tightening of trade quotas by simi-
larly tightening its own quotas.
25. The "late protectionists" are shown in table 11: Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El
Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Kenya, Morocco, Nicaragua, Peru, Sri Lanka,
Syria, Turkey, and Venezuela. Most of the Central American countries closed during the
formation of the Central American Common Market (CACM) in the early 1960s; the An-
dean countries (Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela) closed partly as the result ofjoint
actions of the Andean Group, and partly as the result of internal political choices.

Under these circumstances, the restoration of exchange rate convert-

ibility required either a monetary reform (to remove the monetary over-
hang); a temporary rise of prices and a currency devaluation (to absorb
the monetary overhang through inflation); a long period of real economic
growth to raise the demand for nominal money balances; or some combi-
nation of the three. Milton Friedman cogently argued that a floating ex-
change rate (combined with price decontrol) was the best policy: it
would establish convertibility, and hence the monetary basis for free
trade, automatically and immediately.26 Most countries, however, shied
away from the temporary inflationary consequences that would have ac-
companied such a move, even though they would have been one-shot
rather than ongoing. Largely for this reason, the return to convertibility
in Europe and many other parts of the world was delayed for more than
a decade after World War II.
In some countries, the consequences were even more long-lasting. In
India, for example, various attempts to relax price controls and to rees-
tablish free trade led to a spurt in prices and a subsequent reversal of the
policy.27 For several years, half-hearted attempts at liberalization were
reversed as the result of the accompanying price increases. During this
period the ideology of state control gained in importance, as Jawaharlal
Nehru consolidated his hold on the Indian leadership. Thus the initial
macroeconomic pressures delayed the establishment of convertibility,
while ideology and interest-group lobbying cemented the postwar poli-
cies of inconvertibility, licensing, and protection.
Even after the 1950s, macroeconomic instability continued to pro-
duce closed trade practices in many countries. Throughout Latin
America, populist fiscal policies repeatedly undermined the commit-
ment to currency convertibility and allowed the emergence of significant
black market premiums on the exchange rate in countries with a pegged
rate regime. In this way trade practices were often closed inadvertently,
as a result of overly expansionary macroeconomic policies, rather than
26. Friedman (1953) has typically been read as an argument for floating rather than
fixed exchange rates. More fundamentally, it is an argument for convertibility (which auto-
matically follows from floating rates) as compared to inconvertibility (which often accom-
panies a fixed exchange rate regime). Friedman reasoned that a commitment to a fixed
exchange rate would almost inevitably lead to balance-of- payments pressures and hence,
multiple exchange rates or other forms of inconvertibility. This was certainly the pattern
as of 1953.
27. See Tomlinson (1992).

deliberately. Nonetheless, the economic effects were similar: a rise in

the relative prices of import-competing goods, a reduction of imports,
and a reduction of exports.
INTELLECTUAL B ELI EFS. Several currents of intellectual belief coa-
lesced to support the nearly worldwide adoption of SLI and socialist
strategies. Following two world wars and the Great Depression, the lib-
eral world view seemed to be indefensible. Capitalism had proved to be
rapacious and violent, as J. A. Hobson and Lenin had predicted.28 Even
Keynes had subscribed to this view in 1933. Moreover, the Marxist no-
tion that profits were the result of the exploitation of labor was an ex-
traordinarily enticing explanation for elites in the poorer countries, who
could justifiably view the poverty of their own nations as the result of
degradations committed by the richer nations.
Moreover, as Keynes had seemingly demonstrated, capitalism was
inherently unstable and needed the steadying rudder of the state, per-
haps in the form of the nearly full nationalization of future investment.
It should be remembered that banking, insurance, and much heavy in-
dustry were nationalized in France (under Charles De Gaulle) and in
Britain (under Clement Atlee) as well as in many other Western Euro-
pean countries, and not just in the developing and socialist worlds.
At the same time, there was a growing belief that coordinated, large-
scale public investment was necessary to make a breakthrough to mod-
ernizing industrialization. Paul Rosenstein-Rodan championed the
strategy of the "big push," and Alexander Gershchenkron argued that
the idea was supported by the history of nineteenth-century Europe, in
which the countries lagging in industrialization increasingly relied on the
state to catch up with the richer countries.29 The greater the gap at the
start of industrialization, according to Gershchenkron, the greater was
the state's role in mobilizing resources for the breakthrough. The appar-
ent industrial successes of the Soviet Union, which had proved suffi-
cient to defeat Nazi Germany, seemed to many observers to give ample
confirmation of the technical possibilities of investment planning and
state-led industrialization. These ideas, backed up by the new tech-
niques of national income accounting, input-output analysis, and mathe-
matical growth models, led to the widespread endorsement of develop-
ment planning models in mainstream development economics.
28. See Hobson (1902) and Lenin (1926).
29. See Rosenstein-Rodan (1943) and Gershchenkron and Nimitz (1952).

Export pessimism combined with the idea of the big push to produce
the highly influential view that open trade would condemn developing
countries to long-term subservience in the international system as raw
materials exporters and manufactured goods importers. Comparative
advantage, it was argued by the Economic Commission of Latin
America (ECLA) and others, was driven by short-run considerations
that would prevent raw materials exporting nations from ever building
up an industrial base. The protection of infant industries was therefore
vital if the developing countries were to escape from their overdepen-
dence on raw materials production. These views spread within the
United Nations system (to regional offices of the United Nations Eco-
nomic Commission), and were adopted largely by the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). In 1964 they found
international legal sanction in a new part IV of the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which established that developing coun-
tries should enjoy the right to asymmetric trade policies. While the de-
veloped countries should open their markets, the developing countries
could continue to protect their own markets. Of course, this "right"was
the proverbial rope on which to hang one's own economy!
More radical anti-capitalist views fueled Marxist-inspired revolu-
tions in nearly two dozen countries during the postwar period. Forrest
Colburn offers a masterful evocation of the underlying ideas and sym-
bols common to these revolutions.30 He puts great stress on the role of
ideas, rather than the political economy in motivating the revolutionary
leaders:
The trajectoryof contemporaryrevolutionaryregimesilluminateswhy, at least
in poor countries, the choices of politicalelites are so consequential.In many
such countries,politicalelites are not significantlyconstrainedby eitherthe in-
stitutionsandnormsof governmentor by civil society. Thus, the timefor experi-
mentationand implementationof ideas can be dangerouslycompressed.31
STATE BUILDING. In his classic analysis of European mercantilism,
Eli Heckscher argued that mercantilist trade and industrial policies were
a crucial mechanism by which new nation states consolidated their polit-
30. The list, as provided by Colburn (1994, p. 8) is as follows: Afghanistan (1978), Alge-
ria (1962), Angola (1975), Benin (1972), Bolivia (1952), Burkina Faso (1983), Burma (1962),
Cambodia (1975), China (1949), Cuba (1959), Egypt (1952), Ethiopia (1974), Grenada
(1979), Guinea-Bissau (1974), Laos (1975), North Korea (1948), South Yemen (1967), Viet-
nam (1945). The Iranian revolution (1979) was inspired by Islamic, not Marxist, principles.
31. Colburn (1994, p. 103).

ical power both relative to competing domestic interest groups (such as

guilds and local gentry) and other nations.32In this view, it is no accident
that Alexander Hamilton championed trade protection in his "Report on
the Subject of Manufactures," delivered to the U.S. Congress in 1790, or
that Friedrich List championed industrial policy in the period just before
German unification.33 Both men saw such policies as a part of state
building.
In the post-World War II world, the founding fathers of the newly
independent industrial economies almost all viewed state-managed de-
velopment in political as well as economic terms, and specifically as a
way to foster national unity and the political power of the national gov-
ernment. Thus, Sukharno of Indonesia, Nehru of India, Nkrumah of
Ghana, and Nyerere of Tanzania were as concerned about the political
consolidation of power as about economic strategy per se. Moreover,
in many of these countries, independence had been the result of a long
struggle with the imperial power during which the rallying cry of self-
sufficiency had often played a key role in mobilizing the population. Pro-
tectionist trade policies and barriers to foreign direct investment seemed
to be a vital way to bolster newly won claims of independence.
Trade and industrial policy played an even more direct role in state
building when countries used such policies to build up a military-indus-
trial establishment. In Russia and the Soviet Union, for example, from
Peter the Great to Stalin the principle aim of heavy industrialization was
to bolster the military potential of the state. Similar considerations
played a role in many other countries after World War II, such as
Nehru's India and Nasser's Egypt.34
POLITICAL ECONOMY. Most recent models of trade policy have
been based on interest-group politics.35 Trade policy is viewed as the
outcome of the relative political strengths of various factional, class, or
sectoral interests. Such political considerations have surely played an
important role in the SLI strategies of developing countries, but more
often in the perpetuation of policies than in their onset. John Waterbury
gives a careful, detailed account of state-led industrialization in Egypt,
India, Mexico, and Turkey, showing that ideology, state building, and
32. Heckscher (1955).

33. See Hamilton (1790) and List (1837).
34. See Waterbury (1993, pp. 69-70).
35. See, for example, Magee (1989) and Grossman and Helpman (1994).

geopolitics, rather than domestic interest groups, were the fundamental

forces that initially led to SLI.36 Once SLI policies had built up a pro-
tected sector, however, powerful interest groups developed to defend
them.
In many cases, protectionist policies had their roots in the enforced
autarky of the Great Depression and World War II. Latin America, we
have already noted, swung from open trade to protection after the col-
lapse of its export markets in the early 1930s. A domestic import-com-
peting sector arose naturally in the 1930s and 1940s, while at the same
time, the wealth and power of the free-trade supporters, the large land-
owners and mineowners, were sapped by the collapse of the terms of
trade. In the immediate postwar era, the import-competing sectors,
which now faced the threat of renewed trade competition, added their
voices to other forces lobbying in support of state-led, autarkic policies.
Similarly, in India, many of the key industrial backers of Nehru's Con-
gress Party had vested interests in the licensing arrangements and pro-
tectionism that had been instituted by Britain as part of wartime con-
trols.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the story was similar: wartime controls on
agriculture became postwar mechanisms of a profound anti-export bias.
As P. T. Bauer brilliantly explained in his early critique of African agri-
cultural monopoly boards, West African Trade, the origins of the mar-
keting board arrangements are found in British wartime policy objec-
tives:
The first was to deny suppliesto the enemy and to secure them for the Allies,
particularlythe United Kingdom.The second objectivewas the preventionof a
collapse of the local price of cocoa. The thirdprincipleobjectivewas to increase
exportsof groundnutsand of oil palmproduceafter 1942.Therewere also three
principalelements in the machineryof exportcontrol. The firstwas licensingof
exports to direct these to specific destinations.The second was statutorymo-
nopoly in the handlingof the principleexports. The thirdelementwas a system
of quotasin the purchaseof exportproduce.37
Bauer and Robert Bates explain how these original intentions were later
subverted into very different aims: the expansion of bureaucratic
power; the enhancement of government tax revenues through the mo-
36. Waterbury (1993, p. 10) writes that "for most of the period under scrutiny for each
of the cases, the state has enjoyed considerable autonomy from any constellation of class
actors."
37. Bauer (1954, p. 246).

nopoly purchases of agricultural output at below-market prices; and the

tilt of the internal terms of trade in favor of urban (largely government)
workers, and away from peasant cultivators.38
The basic Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson (HOS) and Ricardo-Viner
(RV) models of trade give some notion of which economic groups in a
society should favor trade protection (either import taxation or export
taxation), and which should lean toward open trade. According to the
HOS model, the move from autarky to trade favors the abundant factors
of production and reduces the real income of the scarce factors of pro-
duction. Thus the relatively scarce factors of production in an economy
should tend to be in favor of autarkic policies. The RV theory highlights
the implications of factor immobility between sectors. When capital or
labor cannot move between sectors, the immobile factors should tend to
favor protection for their own sector, irrespective of the overall scarcity
or abundance of specific factors of production. Firms with sunk capital
in the import-competing sector, and workers with skills specific to that
sector, should tend to favor protection of the sector.
Ronald Rogowski and others have examined relative factor intensi-
ties to assess the pressures for and against free trade in the postwar era.39
Most of the Asian economies tend to have high labor-to-land ratios (land
is the scarce factor), suggesting that workers would tend to favor free
trade (in order to benefit from the export of labor-intensive goods and
the import of inexpensive food), while landowners would tend to favor
protection (to raise the price of foodstuffs in the local economy). In
Latin America and Africa, where labor is scarce and land is abundant,
we would expect the reverse: landowners should be on the side of free
trade (to raise the export price of foodstuffs), and urban workers should
be interested in protection (against the import of labor-intensive goods
and the export of foodstuffs).
Of course, the relative power of the various interests to influence
trade policy will depend on a myriad factors, including the capacity of
competing groups to organize politically and the institutions for political
competition (for example, elections or military rule). In Latin America
from the 1950s to the 1980s, for example, protectionism tended to be fa-
vored during democratic periods, since workers (who, as the scarce fac-
tor, favored protection) could outvote landowners; free trade, on the
38. See Bauer (1954) and Bates (1988).
39. Rogowski (1989).

other hand, was typically promoted by authoritarian governments, sid-

ing with large landowners and mineowners.40 In many parts of the devel-
oping world, especially Latin America and Africa, political power has
been disproportionately concentrated in urban areas, thereby adding to
the political weight of labor relative to landowners and turning the trade
regime more protectionist.41
It might seem that a labor-intensive economy would tend to lean more
readily toward free trade than would a land-intensive (or resource-inten-
sive) economy. Postwar governments have tended to respond more to
labor interests than landowner interests, whether as the result of the
search for votes, or the fear of labor unrest, or the urban bias promoted
by government-sector workers. If labor interests are indeed the deter-
mining factor, then trade liberalization would come more readily in Asia
than in Latin America or Africa. But as already noted, interest group
politics has hardly been decisive. Some labor-intensive economies, such
as the South Asian countries (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri
Lanka) were long protectionist, while labor-scarce Chile became the
first sustained free trader in Latin America (although, notably, under a
military regime).
The Classification and Timing of Trade Policies

The outcome of these various forces produced an overwhelming turn
toward socialism or SLI in the developing world during the 1940s and
1950s, which was only gradually reversed over the next forty years.
According to our classifications, shown in tables 1-5, seventy-eight de-
veloping countries outside of the Soviet bloc chose some form of in-
ward-looking development strategy in the postwar period. Of these,
forty-three had opened their economies by 1994 (see table 2) and thirty-
five were still closed as of 1994 (see table 3). Although developed coun-
tries typically started open and remained open throughout the period,
40. One example is Peru, which maintained open trade during the Odria dictatorship,
between 1948 and 1956. Trade remained relatively free during the democratic presidency
of Manuel Prado (1956-63), but then turned gradually more protectionist under Fernando
Belaunde Terry (1963-68). Peru finally embarked on autarkic, socialist policies under a
left-wing military dictatorship led by Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968-75). Conversely, it was
the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile after 1973 which ended decades of protectionism. For
details, see Skidmore and Smith (1984).
41. See Lipton (1976) and Bates (1981).

Table 1. Developing Economies That Have Always Been Opena

Country Yearof independence
Barbados 1966
Cyprus 1960
Hong Kong not applicable
Malaysia 1963
Mauritius 1968
Singapore 1965
Thailand never colonizt-d
Yemen Arab Republic 1918
Source: See appendix.
a. Since independence, where applicable.
we have found eight other developing countries that followed this pat-
tern (see table 1) and thirteen that had episodes of temporary liberaliza-
tion (these periods are identified in parentheses in tables 1-5).
A parallel process of liberalization was underway in the developed
economies, although integration was typically achieved in the 1950s and
1960s, rather than the 1980s and 1990s (see table 4). Note that for the
purposes of this paper, we define developed economies as all countries
with a real GDP of $5,000 or more in 1970, according to the purchasing-
power adjusted data in Summers and Heston.42 This criterion results in
a few classifications that are not standard, namely that Ireland, Greece,
and Portugal are classified as developing countries, while Trinidad and
Tobago and Venezuela are classified as developed. But these unusual
classifications have little impact on our main conclusions.
Our categorization and timing of trade liberalization are fundamental
to tables 1-5 and the subsequent empirical work. We judge a country to
have a closed trade policy if it has at least one of the following character-
istics:
1. Nontariff barriers (NTBs) covering 40 percent or more of trade.
2. Average tariff rates of 40 percent or more.
3. A black market exchange rate that is depreciated by 20 percent or
more relative to the official exchange rate, on average, during the 1970s
or 1980s.
4. A socialist economic system (as defined by Kornai).43
5. A state monopoly on major exports.
42. Summers and Heston (1991).

43. Kornai (1992).

Table 2. Developing Economies That Had Opened by 1994 after Initial Closure
Pr ior- macroeconomic criisis
Exter-nal External
Year of payments debt High
Count3,y opening' arrears r-eschedulintg itiflationib Relnar ks
Greece 1959 No crisis

Portugal 1960 No crisis
Taiwan 1963 Foreign aid
reduction
Jordan 1965 No crisis
Ireland 1966 No crisis
Korea, Republic 1968 Foreign aid
reduction
Indonesia 1970 Yes Yes 1964
Chile 1976 1973
Botswana 1979 No crisis
Morocco 1984 (1956-64) 1987 1983
Bolivia 1985 (1956-78) 1987 1980 1982
Gambia 1985 1987 1986
Ghana 1985 1987 1981
Costa Rica 1986 (1952-61) 1987 1983
Guinea 1986 1987 1986
Mexico 1986 1983 1983
Guinea-Bissau 1987 1987 1987
Guatemala 1988 (1950-61) 1987 1993
Guyana 1988 1987 1982
Jamaica 1988 (1962-73) 1987 1981
Mali 1988 1987 1988
Philippines 1988 1989 1984
Uganda 1988 1987 1981 1985
El Salvador 1989 (1950-61) 1987 1990
Paraguay 1989 1987
Tunisia 1989 Terms-of-
trade decline
Turkey 1989 1980 1980
Benin 1990 1987 1988
Uruguay 1990 1983 1990
Argentina 1991 1989
Brazil 1991 1987 1983 1981
Colombia 1991 No crisis
Ecuador 1991 (1950-83) 1988 1983
Honduras 1991 (1950-61) 1987 1987
Nepal 1991 No crisis
Nicaragua 1991 (1950-60) 1987 1980 1985
Peru 1991 (1948-67) 1987 1980 1983
South Africa 1991 1987 1985
Sri Lanka 1991 (1950-56)(1977-83) No crisis
Cameroon 1993 (1963-67) 1990 1989
Kenya 1993 1993
Zambia 1993 1987 1983 1989
India 1994 No crisis
Source: External payments arrears, the variable EPA, are recorded in IMF, Annual Repo-t on? Exchange
Restrictions, various issues. External debt rescheduling, the variable DC, is recorded in World Bank (1994c). See
appendix for complete definitions of variables and sources.
a. Dates in parentheses identify temporary liberalizations.
b. High inflation, the variable Hi, indicates annual inflation exceeding 100 percent.
23

Table 3. Developing Economies That Were Closed at the End of 1994a

Algeria Ethiopia Pakistan
Angola Gabon Papua New Guinea
Bangladesh Haiti Rwanda
Burkina Faso Iran Senegal
Burundi Iraq Sierra Leone
Central African Republic Madagascar Somalia
Chad Malawi Syrian Arab Republic (1951-65)
China Mauritania Tanzania
Congo Mozambique Togo
Cote d'Ivoire Myanmar Zaire
Dominican Republic Niger Zimbabwe
Egypt Nigeria
We define an open economy as one in which none of the five condi-

tions applies. The basic trade data are shown in table 6. Details on data
sources and other data adjustments are given in the appendix. Note that
the tariff and nontariff barriers are for the mid-1980s. We have also ex-
amined the time series of tariff and nontariff barriers through an inde-
pendent literature review (also described in the appendix) to judge the
timing of the shift from closed to open trade.
In tables 1-5 the date of trade liberalization is taken to be the year
from which the economy is open continuously through the end of the
sample period, 1994.44For most economies the postwar era is character-
ized by initial closure (failure on one or more of the five criteria listed
above), followed by subsequent opening. For these temporary liberaliz-
ers, the date of opening is taken to be the date at which the openness
criteria are finally met without subsequent reversal up to 1994 (in effect,
ignoring the initial temporary episode of openness). We show below that
44. Our choice of dating is surely subject to further refinement. Our chosen criteria are
useful and objective indicators of trade policy, but we recognize that they are too simplis-
tic. The threshold levels (such as a 20 percent black market premium) are arbitrary, and
the measurements do not account for the general-equilibrium effects of an array of trade
policies. For example, we use nominal tariff rates rather than effective protection rates,
and we do not consider the role of export subsidies in offsetting import protection. The
quantification of nontariff barriers is also inherently difficult. Perhaps most difficult was
judging the year in which openness is first achieved. We relied on a wide array of second-
ary sources, which sometimes contradicted each other. Despite all of these difficulties,
we still believe that our measures of openness and the timing of liberalization convey a
substantial amount of information, though with inevitable error.

Table 4. Developed Economies with Year of Opening
Yearof
Countiy openinga
Australia 1964
Austria 1960
Belgium 1960
Canada 1952
Denmark 1960
Finland 1960
France 1959
Germany 1959
Israel 1985
Italy 1959
Japan 1962
Luxembourg 1959
Netherlands 1959
New Zealand 1986
Norway 1960
Spain 1960
Sweden 1960
Switzerland 1950 or earlier
Trinidad and Tobago closed
United Kingdom 1960
United States 1950 or earlier
Venezuela (1950-59) (1989-92)
the periods of temporary openness were often characterized by sus-

tained economic growth at a higher level than during the subsequent pe-
riod of closure. Finally, in table 5 we show the liberalization record of
the post-socialist European economies, but in this case we rely on
EBRD standards of openness.
The five criteria are chosen in order to cover all of the major types of
trade restriction. Tariffs and nontariff barriers (mainly quotas) are most
obvious. We rely mainly on UNCTAD data for these classifications. The
black market premium (BMP) is a measure of exchange control: a large
BMP is evidence of the rationing of foreign exchange, which tends to be
a form of import control. The socialist classification is used as an indica-
tor to cover countries like Poland and Hungary, which relied on central
planning rather than overt trade policies (for example, tariffs) to main-
tain a closed economy. Export controls are symmetrical with import
controls in their effects on closing an economy, as A. P. Lerner first es-

Table 5. Post-communist Countries with Year of Opening

Yeasof
Countuy opening
Hungary 1990
Poland 1990
Bulgaria 1991
Czech Republic 1991
Slovak Republic 1991
Slovenia 1991
Albania 1992
Estonia 1992
Romania 1992
Croatia 1993
Latvia 1993
Lithuania 1993
Belarus 1994
Kyrgyzstan 1994
FYR Macedonia 1994
Moldova 1994
Armenia closed
Azerbaijan closed
Georgia closed
Kazakhstan closed
Russia closed
Tajikistan closed
Turkmenistan closed
Ukraine closed
Uzbekistan closed
Yugoslavia closed
Source: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (1994).
tablished.45The sub-Saharan African countries relied extensively on ex-

port monopolies on foodstuffs, in part to maintain low domestic prices
of food for urban residents.
Returning to tables 1-5, we show that only a few developing countries
have been continuously open from the start of the postwar era, or from
the start of their independence: Barbados, Cyprus, Hong King, Malay-
sia, Mauritius, Singapore, Thailand, and the Yemen Arab Republic.
Many others embarked on a path of inward-oriented growth in the 1950s
or 1960s that was subsequently reversed in the 1970s or later. (Bolivia,
Ecuador, and Jamaica closed quite late in the period: 1978, 1983, and
1973, respectively.) Some of the first closed economies to open trade
were three East Asian countries: Taiwan (1963), South Korea (1968),
45. See Lerner (1936).

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31

Table 7. Trade Policy Indicators for Asian Economies

Black market Black market Quota Average
Country premium (1970s)a premium (1980S)b coveragec tariffJU
Hong Kong 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Korea 0.09 0.09 0.10 0.14
Singapore 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.02
Taiwan 0.05 0.06 0.38 0.07
Indonesia 0.03 0.04 0.10 0.14
Malaysia 0.00 0.00 0.05 0.09
Thailand 0.00 0.00 0.06 0.29
All developing countries
Median 0.17 0.18 0.14 0.19
Mean 0.44 0.70 0.26 0.22
Source: See appendix for complete definitions of variables and sources.
a. The variable BMP70, measuring the black market exchange premium, averaged over the 1970s.
b. The variable BMP80, measuring the black market exchange premium, averaged over the 1980s.
c. The variable OWQI, indicating coverage of quotas on imports of intermediates and capital goods.
d. The variable OWTI, indicating average tariffs on imports of intermediates and capital goods.
and Indonesia (1970). It has become fashionable to argue that East Asian
countries are not really open or market-oriented, and that, in fact, they
systematically "got the prices wrong" to spur industrial growth.46 It is
surely true that Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia are not laissez faire, but
they and their neighbors in Southeast Asia, Thailand and Malaysia, have
been more open to trade than other developing countries, based on ob-
jective indicators of trade policy, shown in table 7. All of the East Asian
economies have low or zero BMPs; all but Thailand have low tariff rates;
and all but Taiwan have low NTB coverage. Moreover, the Thai tariffs
and the Taiwanese NTBs are moderate, not extreme.
In a later paper we intend to specify a detailed model of the timing of
liberalization during the postwar period. Here we simply test a few of the
simplest propositions that arise from political economy considerations:
that timing should be related to the relative endowments of labor and
land, the size of the economy, the per capita income, and perhaps the
previous political history (for example, number of years since indepen-
dence). As described above, we would expect the transition to openness
to be faster in land-scarce and labor-abundant economies, since it is
plausible that governments will tend to be more responsive to the inter-
ests of labor over landowners. We would also expect the transition to
46. See Wade (1990) with regard to Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan,
and Amsden (1989) with regard to South Korea.

openness to be earlier in less populous economies, since the gains from

trade are presumably larger for an economy with a small domestic mar-
ket. We would also expect that countries that begin the postwar era with
a high per capita income would be more likely to liberalize, because of a
higher initial level of division of labor and degree of specialization within
the economy. Finally, we would expect that postcolonial countries
would be less likely to liberalize (because of the "imperatives" of nation-
building) than countries that have long been independent.
To test these propositions, we estimate the following logit model:
(1) Pr(TLj = 1) = exp(B'Xj)/[1 + exp(B'Xi)],
where TLiis a dummy variable equal to 1 if country i liberalized between
1955 and 1970, and equal to 0 if the country did not liberalize before 1970.
There are sixteen developing countries for which TLi = 1. The vector of
Xs includes: the land-to-population ratio in 1960 as a proxy for the land-
to-labor ratio, the population in 1960, the per capita GDP in 1970, and a
dummy variable for postcolonial status (equal to 1 if independent before
1945). We also include a dummy variable if the country is a British Com-
monwealth country, and another dummy variable if it is a former French
colony, on the grounds that the type of colonial relationship might affect
the timing of postcolonial trade liberalization.47 Our sample includes all
countries with GDP per capita of less than $5,000 in 1970.
The results are shown in table 8. As expected, we find statistical evi-
dence that a high population-to-land ratio raised the probability of an
early trade liberalization. This fact helps to account for the early liberal-
ization in much of Southeast Asia. Similarly, high-income countries
tended to liberalize ahead of low-income countries. Surprisingly, size of
population did not prove to be significant. We also see that not a single
former French colony opened to trade during the period 1955-70. Sev-
eral former British colonies did open to trade, but several others did not.
The dummy variable for British Commonwealth status was not statisti-
cally significant.
Liberalization Episodes in the 1950s and 1960s

While the typical developing country started out as a closed economy
and liberalized later, we have identified fifteen countries that had an ini-
47. For example, liberalization of former French colonies in Africa has tended to be
delayed because of overvalued exchange rates in the French franc zone.

Table 8. Logit Regressions to Explain Timing of Liberalization in Developing Countriesa

Independent variable Estimated coefficient Significance level
Population in 1960b -0.000 [0.699]
Population/land in 1960c 9.520 [0.024]
GDP in 1970d 0.0007 [0.040]
Postcoloniale - 0.665 [0.571]
British Commonwealthf - 0.237 [0.815]
Summary statistic
Sample size 72
Source: Authors' regressions, using data described in the appendix.
a. The regression model is from equation 1 of the text. We created a dummy variable, TL, that takes the value
1.0 if a developing country opened by 1970 and stayed open. The logit specification then estimates a model where
prob [TLj = 1] = exp (I Xj)/[1 + exp (1Xj)], where the Xs are the independent variables. These regressions were
originally estimated with a variable that measured whether the country was a French colony. This variable perfectly
predicted not opening (no former French colony opened before 1970), so the model above is estimated without these
fifteen countries. To assess the fit of the estimated model, note that of the fifty-six countries that did not open, fifty-
five had predicted probabilities of opening of less than 0.5. Of the sixteen countries that did open, seven had predicted
probabilities of more than 0.5.
b. The variable POP60, measuring population in 1960 in thousands.
c. The variable POP60/LAND, measuring population in 1960 in thousands, divided by land area in square meters.
d. The variable GDP70.
e. The dummy variable OLDS, set equal to one for countries that achieved independence before World War 11.
f. The dummy variable CW, set equal to one for countries in the British Commonwealth.
Table 9. Growth Rates during and after Temporary Liberalization Episodes

Percent
Trade policy Average per capita growth
Countiy Open Closed Open Closed
Boliviaa 1956-78 1979-85 2.49 - 2.52
Costa Rica 1952-61 1962-86 3.39 1.84
Ecuadorb 1950-82 1983-91 2.64 - 0.31
El Salvador 1950-61 1962-89 1.72 0.93
Guatemala 1950-61 1962-88 0.86 0.91
Honduras 1950-61 1962-91 0.49 1.22
Jamaica 1962-73 1974-88 4.15 - 0.65
Kenya 1963-67 1968-92 2.94 1.67
Morocco 1956-64 1965-84 4.15 2.14
Nicaragua 1950-60 1961-91 7.20 0.55
Peru 1948-67 1968-91 3.51 - 0.64
Sri Lankac 1950-56 1957-77 0.48 1.23
Syria 1951-65 1966-92 6.51 3.16
Turkey 1950-53 1954-89 11.67 2.40
Venezuelad 1950-59 1960-89 3.88 - 0.45
Source: Authors' calculations, using real per capita growth data taken from version 5.6 of the data contained in
Summers and Heston (1991), and the country sources described in the appendix.
a. A reasonable argument can be made to classify Bolivia as open from 1956 to 1968, rather than to 1978; in which
case average growth during the open period would be 2.41.
b. A reasonable argument can be made to classify Ecuador as open from 1950 to 1970, rather than to 1982; in
which case average growth during the open period would be 2.04.
c. Sri Lanka also had a temporary liberalization episode in 1977-83, during which growth was 5.37.
d. Venezuela also had a temporary liberalization episode in 1989-92, during which growth was 6.17.

tial episode of temporary liberalization. In almost all cases, these are

countries that had a tradition of open trade, which was resurrected im-
mediately following the Second World War. Table 9 lists these countries
and the dates of the temporary liberalization as well as the average
growth rates, both during the open period and the subsequent closed pe-
riod. We find that in twelve of the fifteen cases, average growth in the
open period exceeded that in the subsequent closed period. This is im-
portant because it suggests that the eventual decision to close the econ-
omy was generally not caused by slow growth during the open period,
but rather by political and ideological shifts within each country. This is
corroborated by economic histories of these countries, which rarely
give slow growth as a reason for the policy switch. In the notes to the
table, we also report high average growth rates in two later temporary
liberalizations, in Sri Lanka and Venezuela. Overall, we find little direct
evidence that slow growth played an important role in ending these epi-
sodes of liberalization.
The Impact of Postwar Global Integration on Economic

Performance, 1970-89
In this section we show that during the period 1970-89 open econo-
mies outperformed closed economies on three main dimensions of eco-
nomic performance: economic growth, avoidance of extreme macroec-
onomic crises, and structural change. In the process we demonstrate the
close relationship between economic integration and economic conver-
gence, that is, poor countries tend to grow faster than richer countries,
as long as the poor and rich countries are linked together by international
trade. Poor, closed economies have often performed significantly less
well than the richer countries.
For the purposes of this section, we define a country as open if it satis-
fies the five policy criteria for the duration of the 1970s and 1980s. Coun-
tries that were closed during part of this period but subsequently liberal-
ized are treated as closed economies. In the following section, we pick
up the trail of those economies by examining the effects of relatively late
trade liberalization on economic performance.
Openness and Growth

During 1970-89, we find a strong association between openness and
growth, both within the group of developing and the group of developed

Table 10. Developing Country Growth and Openness, 197089a

Always Not always
Growth rate' open open
Average growth
>3.0 11 4
Average growth
<3.0 4 70
a. In a test of independence the chi square is 41 (significance level = 0.000).
b. The growth variable is G7089, the real annual per capita growth in GDP over 1970-89, described in the appendix.
countries. Within the group of developing countries, the open econo-

mies grew at 4.49 percent per year, and the closed economies grew at
0.69 percent per year. Within the group of developed economies, the
open economies grew at 2.29 percent per year, and the closed economies
grew at 0.74 percent per year.48
We may also classify the data in a different way to focus on growth
within the open and closed groups. Within the closed group, average
growth is about the same for the poorer developing countries (0.69 per-
cent) as the richer developed countries (0.74 percent). However, within
the group of open economies, the developing countries grew faster (4.49
percent) than the developed countries (2.29 percent). This suggests that
within the group of open economies, both developing and developed, we
should tend to observe economic convergence. Another way to look at
this is provided by table 10 which shows the frequency of growth rates
above and below 3 percent per year for closed and open developing
countries. Eleven of the fifteen open economies grew at more than 3 per-
cent per year, while only four of seventy-four closed economies
achieved such growth. For this cross-tabulation, x2 = 41 (p < 0.000), so
that we may reject the null hypothesis of no difference in growth rates
between the closed and open economies.
Figure 2 shows the average annual growth rates for a group of forty
always-closed developing economies and a group of eight always-open
developing economies during the period 1965-90. As can be seen, the
48. Four developed economies were closed for part of the period: Israel, New
Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela. While three of these countries are not nor-
mally classified as developed, on a purchasing power parity basis, their per capita GDP
exceeded $5,000 in 1970, and thus they qualify as developed by the standard used in this
paper.

Figure 2. Average Growth of Eight Always Open and Forty Always Closed Economies,
1966-90
Growthratea
0.15
0.14
0.13 -
0.12 -
0.11 _
0.10 _
0.09 /Open
0.08 -
0.07 -
0.06 -
0.05 -
0.04 -
0.03 - loe
0.02 -----Closed-
0.01 -%00
0.00 %
-0.01
-0.02'
-0.03-
-0.04-
-0.05 I l l I
1965 1970 1975 1980 1985
Source: Authors' calculations using version 5.6 of the data in Summers and Heston (1991).
a. Figure shows three-year moving averages.
always-open economies outperformed the always-closed economies in

every year. The open economies were clearly more susceptible to the
external shocks of the first half of the 1970s (the breakdown of Bretton
Woods, worldwide inflation, and the OPEC oil price increases), but then
bounced back. Note that the average per capita growth rates of the open
economies at the end of the 1980s was about the same as during the sec-
ond half of the 1960s, around 5 or 6 percent per year. The closed econo-
mies, by contrast, evidence a long-term slowdown in growth (2 or 3 per-
cent per year in the late 1960s, around 0 percent per year in the late
1980s).
The data suggest that the absence of overall convergence in the world
economy during the past few decades might well result from the closed
trading regimes of most of the poorer countries. We now investigate the
issue of convergence in greater detail. Our starting point is figure 3. We
graph on the x-axis the 1970 level of per capita GDP of our sample of
countries and on the y-axis, the growth of per capita GDP for 1970-89.49
49. The exact definitions of the data and the selection of countries are described in the
appendix.

Figure 3. Growth and Initial Income, All Economies, 1970-89

Annualgrowth
per capita (percent)
8
Botswanae * Korea,R. of
* Taiwan
6 Singapore* * Hong Kong
Yemen * China
Indonesiae
* Mauritius
4 - Thailand* 0 Malaysia
0 Cyprus
%Hungary * Japan
Sri Lanka D Brazi 0 Ireland Norwa4 Finland *Canada
Burundie0 I a Gec 0*Iay o Austria 0 Luxembourg
2 2- _ CamerA
Camer~A k2lg4ia *Greece0 Israel
rItaly
4 * 0 DemBaelgium
BegUm Lxmor
'e tts
Jm Congo *lexico DenmaOFranct
Bur1na Faso Costaicga Trinidad* Netherlands S'Sfwl zerland.
& Tobago
JH5iti 9PanaAa
Guinead Gambia * South Africa
Ethiopia 00 * GJaa
Sierra BCentral A can *Argentina

Leone 0 Chad 0 Iran 0 Venezuela
NigetP * Nicaragua
Angola *.Madagascar
*Mozambique
-2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
1970 GDP per capita (thousandsof 1985 dollars)
Source: Version 5.5 of the data in Summers and Heston (1991) and World Bank (1994d).
If convergence predominated in the data, then there would be a negative

relationship between initial income in 1970 and subsequent growth be-
tween 1970 and 1989. No such tendency is found overall in the world
economy. Many poor countries, particularly those in sub-Saharan Af-
rica, not only fail to grow faster than the rich countries; they in fact expe-
rience negative per capita growth, so that the gap between these coun-
tries and the rich countries widens significantly.
When Paul Romer first introduced the conundrum of nonconver-
gence to the economics profession in his path-breaking 1986 analysis, he
suggested that it might be due to the fundamental nature of economic
growth.50 Romer showed that if production is subject to spillovers of
knowledge in the production process, so that learning or skills devel-
oped in one part of the economy raise the productivity of other parts of
50. Romer (1986).

the economy, then the aggregate economy may be freed from the dimin-
ishing marginal productivity of capital that is characteristic of standard
production processes. In this case, the rich countries could continue to
stay ahead of the poor countries, since their higher income would reflect
higher levels of learning or human skills, which in turn would raise the
future productivity of capital.
Romer's hypothesis, while intriguing, seems to be contradicted by
other data, which show convergence within more restricted subsamples
of economies. For example, Steve Dowrick and Duc-Tho Nguyen show
that the advanced economies of the Organisation for Economic Co-op-
eration and Development (OECD) displayed strong tendencies of con-
vergence in the postwar period, with the relatively poor OECD econo-
mies tending to grow more rapidly than the richer economies, thereby
closing the proportionate income gap. Similarly, Williamson and associ-
ates in several studies find evidence for convergence among the leading
economies during the period of internationalization at the end of the
nineteenth century. Robert Barro and Xavier Sala-i-Martin find strong
evidence of convergence in living standards among U.S. states and Jap-
anese prefectures. Dan Ben-David shows strong convergence among
the members of the European Community and the European Free Trade
Area, with the dispersion of income falling as trade liberalization pro-
ceeded.51
The contrasting evidence has given rise to two related hypotheses.
William Baumol and others have suggested that there may be a conver-
gence club, meaning a subset of countries for which convergence ap-
plies, while countries outside of the club would not necessarily experi-
ence convergence relative to those within it: "It also seems clear that
convergence does not apply to the poorest of the world economies,
though the line separating those eligible for membership in the conver-
gence club and those foreclosed from membership has not been deter-
mined definitively."52 Baumol suggests that only countries with an ade-
quate initial level of human capital endowments can take advantage of
modern technology to enjoy convergent growth. He therefore speaks of
the "advantages of moderate backwardness," arguing that while middle-
income developing countries can take advantage of their lag in technol-
51. See Dowrick and Nguyen (1989), Williamson (1992), Barro and Sala-i-Martin
(1991), and Ben-David (1993).
52. Baumol, Nelson, and Wolff (1994, p. 82).

ogy to borrow from abroad, the poorest countries are unable to bridge
the gap in technology and knowledge.53
Barro and Sala-i-Martin have introduced the related notion of condi-
tional convergence, in which countries differ in their long-run per capita
income levels, with each country tending to grow more rapidly the
greater is the gap between its initial per capita income level and its own
long-run per capita income level.54 Formally, country i is assumed to
have the long-run per capita income level yi*, and initial per capita in-
come level yi. The rate of growth, ji, is assumed to be an increasing func-
tion of the gap between yi* and yi:
(2) Ys= (Yi*-Yi)

-
A positive value of B is said to signify conditional convergence. In turn,

yi* is proxied by certain "structural" variables, Zjfl such as the initial
level'of human capital, according to an equation y,* = EY]iZ,i Barro and
others then estimate a regression equation of the form:
(3) yi = B (EY1zj> - Y1)

They tend to find a negative and significant coefficient for initial income,
yi, and significant coefficients on several of the structural variables, Zi.55
Like Baumol, Barro concludes that "a poor country tends to grow
faster than a rich country, but only for a given quantity of human capital;
that is, only if the poor country's human capital exceeds the amount that
typically accompanies the low level of per capita income. "156 More re-
cently, Robert Barro, Gregory Mankiw, and Xavier Sala-i-Martin state
that the "substantially different steady states . . . can reflect the effects
of disparities in preferences and government policies on the saving rate,
fertility, and the available production technology."57
In summary, there have been three dominant explanations offered in
53. Baumol, Nelson, and Wolff (1994, p. 65).

54. See Barro (1991) and Barro and Sala-i-Martin (1991, 1992a).
55. The finding of conditional convergence is now fairly well established in the empiri-
cal literature. A number of studies have found this result using post-World War II data
with different conditioning variables. The list includes Barro (1991), De Long and Sum-
mers (1991), King and Levine (1993), Levine and Renelt (1992), Mankiw, Romer, and Weil
(1992), and Sachs and Warner (1995).
56. Barro (1991, p. 409).
57. Barro, Mankiw, and Sala-i-Martin (1995, p. 103).

the literature for the absence of convergence shown in figure 3. The first
holds that productive technology is intrinsically kind to the technologi-
cal leader: the rich tend to grow richer as a result of increasing returns
to scale in one form or another.58The second holds that convergence is
a fact of life, but only among countries with a sound human capital base
for using modern technology. The third holds that currently poor coun-
tries have a low long-term potential income level (yi*), though countries
do tend to grow faster the greater is the gap between their current in-
come and their own long-run potential.
The first two interpretations, and possibly the third, would be pro-
foundly pessimistic for the poorer countries today, since they suggest
that the poorer countries will be unable to close the gap with the richer
countries. The conditional convergence hypothesis is ambiguous on this
fundamental point. If the low long-term potential income of the poor
countries that it posits is due to preferences and initial skill levels, then
it too is profoundly pessimistic. In this case the hypothesis is akin to
Baumol's convergence club. On the other hand, if the low long-term po-
tential income is due to bad policies, then convergence could still be
achieved by policy changes.
We suggest that the most parsimonious reading of the evidence is that
convergence can be achieved by all countries, even those with low ini-
tial levels of skills, as long as they are open and integrated in the world
economy. In this interpretation, the convergence club is the club of
economies linked together by international trade: thus the OECD, the
European Community, the late-nineteenth-century economies, the U.S.
states, and the Japanese prefectures all tend to show convergence. In
terms of the conditional convergence hypothesis, we argue that the ap-
parent differences in long-term income levels are not differences due to
fundamental tastes and technologies, but rather to policies regarding
economic integration.
The role of policy choices in convergence is dramatically evident in
figures 4 and 5, where we divide the sample in figure 3 into groups of
open and closed economies. Figure 4 shows that the open countries dis-
play a strong tendency toward economic convergence, and that the
countries with initially low per capita income levels grow more rapidly
58. Increasing returns to scale is shorthand for a wide variety of technological possibil-
ities, such as learning by doing, spillovers in knowledge accumulation, agglomeration
economies among suppliers of specialized inputs to production, etc.

Figure 4. Growth and Initial Income, Open Economies, 1970-89

Annualgrowth
8
* Korea,R.of
* Taiwan
Yemen .
Indonesiaa
* Mauritius
4 - Thailand * * Malaysia
* Cyprus
* Portugal * J~a4n
} Canada
Ireland Norwai. Finland e
*2 Jordan (*a GeceBarbadost *Austri * Luxembourg
2 - *1 Belgium United States.*
Denm?ark Ge
Netherlands* Wzerland.
-2
A I I
-2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Source: Authors' calculations using version 5.5 of the data in Summers and Heston (1991).
than the richer countries.59 The closed economies in figure 5 do not dis-
play any tendency toward convergence. In fact, they are clearly the
source of the failure of convergence noted in figure 3. Even more strik-
ing, there is not a single country in our sample (which covers 111 coun-
tries and approximately 98 percent of the non-communist world in 1970)
which pursued open trade policies during the entire period 1970-89 and
yet had per capita growth of less than 1.2 percent per year (Switzerland
had the lowest growth, at 1.24 percent). And not a single open devel-
oping country grew at less than 2 percent per year (Greece, at 2.38 per-
cent, and Jordan, at 2.58 percent, are the lowest)!
59. The open economies also exhibit convergence in the sense of having a declining
dispersion of GDP over time (sigma-convergence in Barro and Sala-i-Martin's terminol-
ogy). For the open economies the standard deviation of the log of GDP was 0.83 in 1970
and 0.75 in 1989.

Figure 5. Growth and Initial Income, Closed Economies, 1970-89
Annualgrowth
8
Botswana e
6-
* China
4 -
Tunisia* *Hungary
SriLanka Braz~
Burundi a Y D#
2 Camer(Ab lgejia * Israel
* to
as0 *Mexico
Congo Costa
BurkinaFaso Rica *Trinidad * New Zealand
O
Rwanda Chile
**tiPanat*a ~ & Tobago
&Tbg
Guine aGambia Southon
Africa
_O
Ethiopia@ e * *
Jamaica-Iraq
Benin
S
Sierra @etha *Argentina
Leone *Ocentral Afrcan RR.*retn
Iran * Venezuela
-2 - Chad*
Nige1% * * Nicaragua
Angola *eMadagascar
* Mozambique
A l l l l l l I
-2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Source: Authors' calculations using version 5.5 of the data in Summers and Heston (1991) and World Bank (1994d).
So far we have analyzed growth per capita rather than growth per
worker. The reason is that per capita growth rates are available for a
longer time span than the per worker growth rates, which often rely on
less frequent census data. However, since some theories (the Solow
model in particular) predict convergence more precisely in terms of
growth per worker, it is worth examining the available data on such
growth. Figure 6 presents figure 4 redrawn with growth per worker on
the y axis (covering the period 1970-85 rather than 1970-89). The nega-
tive relation between growth and initial income is more clearly evident
in this figure than in figure 4.60 Based on this evidence, if growth per
worker were available for the full time period, we would expect it to
strengthen our conclusions regarding convergence, but the minimum
60. This result, that per worker growth exhibits stronger evidence for convergence
than per capita growth, is also observed by Wolf (1994).

Figure 6. Growth Per Worker and Initial GDP Per Worker, Open Economies, 1970-85
Annualgrowth
per worker(percent)
8
6 Yemen, N. Arab.
Indonesia * Korea, R. of o
0 Jordan Taiwan
*Malaysia *Japan
Thailand* * YrVuspIreland*Norway
2 Mauritius
*~~~~~~~~~~ *SFinl1pdn
Portugale Asai S Canada
Spain e
~~Uniteftta?es
0 *Barbados
-2
-4
-6 X l lI l l l l
7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10 10.5
Log of 1970 GDP per worker(thousandsof 1985 dollars)
Source: Authors' calculations using versions 5 and 5.5 of the data in Summers and Heston (1991).
growth rate of the open group would be about 0 percent rather than 1.2
percent. We plan to examine this phenomenon further when data from
the 1990 census rounds become available.
In summary, we find no cases to support the frequent worry that a
country might open and yet fail to grow. Of course, economic reforms
take time to work, so that some countries that adopted outward-oriented
market reforms in the late 1980s or early 1990s might not yet be enjoying
high growth rates as a result. We return to the growth effects of recent
reforms in the next major section of the paper.
We also find little support for the idea that our results might come
from reverse causality or from sample selection bias. We simply find
very few examples of developing countries that started open, performed
poorly, and closed as a result. The far more common case is that devel-
oping countries started closed, performed poorly, and then opened. As

emphasized above, most developing countries started out as closed

economies. And the few that had temporary episodes of liberalization
had high growth during the open period. It is therefore hard to argue that
slow growth caused the turn to closed policies. Rather, it seems that for
reasons unrelated to growth performance, the developing world in 1970
was sorted into a large group of closed economies and a much smaller
group of open economies. Twenty-five years later, sufficient time has
passed for us to see the effects of this fundamental policy choice on
growth.
Our evidence so far suggests that being open to international trade
has been sufficient to achieve growth in excess of 2 percent for devel-
oping countries.6' What of necessity? Are there many countries that
closed and yet achieved high economic growth? There are four devel-
oping countries that are classified as closed during the period and yet had
per capita growth of more than 3 percent per year during 1970-89:
Botswana, China, Hungary, and Tunisia.
Botswana failed to qualify on the basis of its black market premium
for the 1970s, but did qualify for the 1980s. It passed all other criteria.
Overall, therefore, the policies have been relatively open, especially in
the 1980s. Moreover, since around 80 percent of Botswana's exports are
diamonds, and a remarkably small proportion (less than 5 percent) of the
labor force is in agriculture, Botswana avoided the anti-agricultural bi-
ases that affected most of sub-Saharan Africa.
It is relatively straightforward to account for Hungary and Tunisia.
Their successful growth is more apparent than real. Both countries pur-
sued statist development strategies that produced growth in the 1970s
and financial crises in the 1980s and early 1990s. In both cases there was
a serious downturn in growth at the end of the 1980s, as these financial
crises hit the government. Considered over a slightly longer time period,
these countries would not look like successes, and therefore would not
be anomalous.
In our view, China is the only puzzle, although it is essentially consis-
tent with the importance of open trade. It is indeed true that China has
violated most of the rules: high black market premiums on the yuan, ex-
61. Of course, our indicators of openness are associated with other market-based re-
form policies, which makes it difficult to identify the precise contribution of trade as com-
pared to other policies. A more precise statement is that open policies together with other
correlated policies were sufficient for growth in excess of 2 percent during 1970-89.

tensive reliance on trade quotas, and a socialist ownership structure.

Nonetheless, the country has experienced a boom. We believe that
China's success is strongly related to its particular economic structure
at the onset of its market reforms at the end of the 1970s.
In particular, China was a very poor economy in 1978, with three-
quarters of the labor force in peasant farming. The essence of Deng
Xiaoping's reforms at the end of the 1970s was to free the peasant econ-
omy from state controls, even while maintaining the state's grip on the
nonpeasant, state-owned sector (which covered just 18 percent of the
labor force). With respect to international trade, the economy was es-
sentially liberalized for nonstate firms, especially those operating in the
Special Economic Zones (SEZ) in the coastal areas. Even though the
currency remained inconvertible, and many state enterprises remained
subject to rationing of imports, the nonstate enterprises (including joint
ventures and foreign firms) were generally able to import their inputs
nearly duty free, and to export processed goods to world markets. The
result was a remarkable export boom, based heavily on labor-intensive
operations. Shang-Jin Wei presents clear evidence that trade liberaliza-
tion played an important role in China's growth.62
Thus, China's "two-track approach" (decontrol of the peasant sector
and continued control of the state sector) was sufficient to unleash eco-
nomic development and a labor-intensive export boom, even though it
did not solve the many problems of poor performance in the state-owned
sector. Some analysts have also argued that its boom is fragile and could
still be stopped by the macroeconomic instability characteristic of many
economies part way between planning and a market economy.63
We now turn briefly to a regression analysis, to confirm and deepen
these basic findings. Various regression estimates are reported in table
11, showing the relationship between initial income in 1970 and subse-
quent growth between 1970 and 1989. We see in regression 1 the absence
62. To quote his conclusions: "I have found some clear evidence that during 1980-90
more exports are positively associated with higher growth rates across Chinese cities. In
the late 1980s, the contribution to growth comes mainly from foreign investment. Further-
more, the contribution of foreign investment comes in the form of technological or mana-
gerial spillovers across firms as opposed to an infusion of new capital. Finally, the superb
growth rates of coastal areas relative to the national average can be entirely explained by
their effective use of exports and foreign investment." (Wei, 1995, p. 74.) Also, see Lardy
(1994) for further discussion of China's recent experience with international trade.
63. See Sachs and Woo (1994) for further details of the two-track approach in China
and the current macroeconomic problems.

of convergence for the entire sample of countries (the coefficient on ini-

tial income is positive rather than negative, and is statistically insignifi-
cant). In regression 2 we see the strong evidence of convergence within
the set of open countries. The coefficient on initial income suggests that
each percentage point rise in per capita income in 1970 reduces subse-
quent annual growth by 0.014 percentage points. Each doubling of 1970
income reduces annual growth by 0.95 percentage points (= ln(2) x
1.368). In regression 3, we confirm the absence of convergence among
the nonqualifying countries.
We have also found that this result on the importance of openness for
growth is robust to the presence of several other possible explanatory
variables. In regressions 4 and 5 we illustrate this with Barro's growth
regression, since it is particularly well known.M4In regression 4, we rep-
licate the Barro regression on cross-country growth for our sample and
time period. We see it performs as expected, showing conditional con-
vergence (a negative, significant coefficient on initial income), positive
(although not significant) effects of educational attainment, positive ef-
fects of the investment-to-GDP ratio, and negative effects of measures
of political instability.
Regression 5 estimates the same equation but includes a dummy vari-
able for openness (OPEN = 0 for a closed economy, 1 for an open econ-
omy). When we add OPEN, we find that the open economies grow, on
average, by 2.45 percentage points more than the closed economies,
with a highly statistically significant effect. Comparing the rest of the re-
gressors with the estimates of regression 4, the effect of investment de-
clines and the initial education levels are even less significant. This is
consistent with our view that the growth rate over this period was deter-
mined less by initial human capital levels than by policy choices. Our
finding that openness plays an important role in a Barro-style cross-
country growth equation is consistent with much recent research, in-
cluding work by Surgit Bhalla, J. Bradford De Long and Lawrence Sum-
mers, David Dollar, and Ross Levine and David Renelt.65 Indeed, some
64. See Barro (1991).

65. See Bhalla (1994), De Long and Summers (1991), Dollar (1992), and Levine and
Renelt (1992). More specifically, De Long and Summers use several measures of outward
orientation and price distortions. Levine and Renelt use the black market premium, the
number of revolutions and coups, a socialist dummy, a civil liberties index, and measures
of openness based on Leamer (1988). These studies examine the marginal contribution of
the variables on the right side of a regression equation; none use these variables to sort
countries into groups and examine the groups separately.

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of our data, such as the tariff and black market premium data, have been
used in previous studies, including those by Jong-Wha Lee and Levine
and Renelt.66 Our treatment of these data differs from the earlier studies
in two important ways: first, by our construction of a single indicator
measure of openness (built on several underlying variables); and sec-
ond, by our examination of growth performance within the subset of
open economies, as well as between closed and open economies. To our
knowledge, no earlier studies have pointed out that corivergence applies
to the worldwide subset of open economies.67
In regression 6, we add a dummy variable, POL, to account for ex-
treme political conditions detrimental to long-term investment. The
variable POL takes a value of 1 when any of the following conditions
applies:
-A socialist economic structure, according to the list of countries
compiled by Kornai.68
-Extreme domestic unrest caused by revolutions, coups, chronic
civil unrest, or a prolonged war with a foreign country that is fought on
domestic territory.
-Extreme deprivation of civil and political rights, according to the
Freedom House index reported by McMillan, Rausser, and Johnson.69
We see that the POL variable is statistically significant at the 10 per-
cent level (t = 1.986), suggesting that property rights, freedom, and
safety from violence are additional determinants of growth.70This find-
ing is in accord with other recent studies, including work by A. S. Ales-
ina and others, Barro, Bhalla, and Jakob Svensson.71 In other regres-
sions, not reported here, we have experimented with the three
individual items in the POL index, and have found that each one plays a
role in the growth process.
66. See Lee (1993) and Levine and Renelt (1992).

67. Note also that we find no evidence for significant interactions between the open-
ness variable and the other regressors that would diminish the explanatory power of
openness.
68. Kornai (1992).
69. McMillan, Rausser, and Johnson (1994).
70. Note, however, that the set of countries with POL = 1 is a subset of the set of
closed economies. Therefore use of the POL variable as an additional criterion to classify
countries would give the same set of countries as using the OPEN variable alone. The same
is true for the set of countries that had annual inflation rates above 100 percent for any year
between 1970 and 1989.
71. See Alesina and others (1992), Barro (1991), Bhalla (1994), and Svensson (1994).

Table 12. Effects of Growth on Human and Physical Capital Accumulationa
Dependent variable
Independent
variable INV7089b DS YRc DPYRd
Constant -0.144 0.118 0.151

(-2.232) (3.144) (4.566)
OPENe 0.054 -0.004 -0.003
(3.328) (-0.502) (-0.360)
LGDP70f 0.047 -0.010 -0.016
(6.412) (-2.137) (-4.283)
Summarv statistics
R~2 0.519 0.069 0.250
Mean dependent variable 0.182 0.049 0.025
SER 0.063 0.033 0.027
Sample size 113 97 90
Source: Authors' regressions based on data described in the appendix.
a. The numbers in parentheses are t statistics.
b. IN7089 is the ratio of public and private investment spending to GDP, averaged over the period 1970-89.
c. DSYR is average accumulation of secondary schooling over the period 1970-85. Specifically, DSYR
[ln(SYR85) - ln(SYR70)/15], where SYRxx is person years of secondary schooling divided by the total population
over age fifteen.
d. DPYR is accumulation of primary schooling, calculated in the same manner as DSYR.
e. OPEN is a dummy variable set equal to one for open economies.
f. LGDP70 is the natural log of GDP per capita in 1970.
We have shown above that the labor-to-land ratio has been a determi-
nant of the timing of liberalization among developing countries. In re-
gression 7 we include this ratio as a possible independent determinant of
growth, to check whether openness is acting simply as a proxy for rela-
tive factor endowments. The variable is insignificant, while the open-
ness variable maintains its magnitude and statistical significance.
We have found strong evidence that protectionist trade policies re-
duce overall growth when controlling for the other variables. Since poor
trade policies might also affect the rates of investment relative to GDP
and the rates of human capital accumulation, we would expect poor poli-
cies to have indirect adverse growth effects as a result of slower accumu-
lation of capital, both physical and human. In regressions 8-10 in table
12, we therefore check whether open and closed economies differed sys-
tematically in the rates of capital accumulation, once we control for ini-
tial income. In regression 8 we find that the open economies had signifi-
cantly higher investment-to-GDP ratios, and that OPEN raised the
investment ratio by an average of 5.4 percentage points.72 Interestingly,
72. Levine and Renelt (1992), using trade shares as a measure of openness, also find
that investment shares are higher in more open economies. This is one of the few findings
that they classify as robust, using extreme bounds analysis.

there is also some evidence that richer countries have higher investment
rates than poorer countries.
In regressions 9 and 10, we ask whether the increase in educational
attainment between 1970 and 1985 was different for the two subsets of
countries. We find no evidence that the closed economies had less im-
provement in the coverage of primary and secondary education than did
the open economies. It is clear, though, that the more developed econo-
mies had less improvement in educational coverage than did the poorer
countries (as evidenced by the significant negative sign on initial income
in both regressions).
Based on the regression analysis, we may make four conclusions:
-There is strong evidence of unconditional convergence for open
countries, and no evidence of unconditional convergence for closed
countries.7
-Closed countries systematically grow more slowly than do open
countries, showing that "good" policies matter.
-The role of trade policy continues after controlling for other growth
factors, as in a standard Barro cross-country growth equation.
-Poor trade policies seem to affect growth directly, controlling for
other factors, and to affect the rate of accumulation of physical capital.
Trade Policy and Changes in the Export Structure

One of the original arguments for SLI was the promotion of manufac-
turing exports. Raul Prebisch and other economists worried that raw
materials exporters that maintained free trade would be unable to indus-
trialize, and would therefore be vulnerable to long-term adverse move-
ments in the terms of trade between primary and manufactured goods.
Import substitution, it was argued, would give time for domestic indus-
try to develop and to improve productivity, perhaps sufficient to gener-
ate manufactured exports in the distant future. Paul Krugman gave an
influential exposition of this infant-industry argument in a formal model
of increasing-returns-to-scale production resulting from learning by
doing.74
73. An alternative, and formally equivalent, way to state our conclusion is that conver-
gence is conditional on policies, not on structural variables (for example, initial income or
level of education). We therefore argue against the notion of a low-income "development
trap," since open trade policies (and correlated market policies) are available to even the
poorest countries.
74. Krugman (1987).

Using our classification of trade policy, we can examine the two re-
lated propositions that open trade condemns raw materials exporters to
nonindustrialization, and that closed trade promotes industrial exports
in the long term. Based on UNCTAD classifications of trade structure,
we measure the share of primary exports (agriculture, minerals, fuels,
and metals) in total merchandise exports, X. We then examine the
change in X between 1971 and 1989 as a function of trade policy during
the period.
Our basic model is:
(4) X,89 - = (B + yOPEN1) x (X/T - X71).
According to equation 4, the share of primary exports in GDP adjusts

gradually to a long-term equilibrium level denoted XiLT. This long-term
level may itself be a function of the specific factor endowments of the
country, for example the ratio of labor to land and other natural re-
sources, as well as the long-term structure of trade policy itself. The de-
gree of openness, in turn, may affect the speed of adjustment. If the pa-
rameter y is positive, open economies adjust more rapidly to their long-
term equilibrium, while if y is negative, closed economies adjust more
rapidly to their long-term equilibrium, X/LT. According to the theory of
import protection as export promotion, a primary exporter that is
evolving toward being a manufacturing exporter will experience afaster
transition to manufacturing exports with a protective trade policy (that
is, y < O).
We estimate equation 4, with the addition of a constant term, 0, in
four variants. In the first regression shown in table 13, we assume that
the long-term level of X is the same for all economies, and that the export
structure gradually adjusts to that common long-run value. Our point es-
timate of the long-run value of X is not significantly different from zero
(that is, no exports of primary goods in the long run). We find that closed
economies have a partial adjustment coefficient of only 0.049, while
open economies have a coefficient of 0.366 (equal to 0.049 + 0.317).
Thus open economies tend to adjust more rapidly from being primary-
intensive to manufactures-intensive exporters. The difference in speed
of adjustment is statistically significant. While many countries adopted
the model of import protection as export promotion (of manufactures),
it was the open economies that did best in promoting the export of manu-
factures.

Table 13. Openness and Export Diversity in Developing Countriesa
Estimated Regression
parameter 1 2 3 4
0 - 0.035 -0.044 - 0.044 -0.044
(-0.377) (-0.397) (-0.397) (-0.902)
13 0.049 0.034 0.034 0.036
(0.491) (0.315) (0.315) (0.413)
y 0.317 0.286 0.286 0.318
(1.987) (1.408) (1.408) (2.535)
cx - 0.035 0.055 0.055 0.078
(-0.097) (0.092) (0.092) (0.035)
8 - 0.077 - 0.077 - 0.0013
(-0.339) (-0.339) (-0.058)
E - 0.000004 -0.272
(-0.000) (-0.123)
Summary statistics
R2 0.165 0.162 0.162 0.129
Mean dependent variable - 0.101 - 0.103 -0.103 -0.094
SER 0.160 0.161 0.161 0.151
Sample size 80 78 78 99
Source: Authors' regression based on data described in the appendix.
a. The regressions are from equation 4 in the text, X89 - X71 = 6 + (p + y OPEN) (oe + 8 POPL + e OPEN
- X71). OPEN is a dummy variable set equal to one for open economies. POPL is the ratio of population to land
area in 1960. X71 and X89 are the fraction of primary exports in total exports in 1971 and 1989. The numbers in
parentheses are t statistics.
The next two variants of the regression investigate whether the land-
to-labor ratio and the trade policy affect the long-term levels of X. In the
second regression, we assume that X is a negative function of the endow-
ment of population (POP) relative to land area (L). Economies with a
high population-to-land area ratio would be expected to have a low value
of X, so if XiT = at + i(POPIL)i,we expect 8 < 0. In the third equation
in table 13 we assume that the measure of trade policy during 1970-90
(OPEN = 0 or 1) is also a measure of long-run trade policy (or the mar-
ket's expectation of long-run trade policy), and is therefore a determi-
nant of the long-run value of X, so that X/T = ot + bi(POPIL1) + EOPENi.
As table 13 shows, neither the ratio of population to land area nor
openness is a statistically significant determinant of the long-run propor-
tion of primary exports. In fact, the estimated XLT is virtually unaffected
by the inclusion of the other variables. The important result is that the
speed of adjustment is still different in closed and open economies. Open
economies continue to display much greater dynamism in changing their
export structure from primary commodities to manufactures. Indeed,

closed economies display almost no change at all in export structure dur-

ing the nearly-twenty-year interval examined in the regressions, since
the estimate of ,3 is always insignificant. In regression 4 we show that
these conclusions also hold when the regression is estimated with the
developed countries added to the sample.
Trade Policy and Macroeconomic Crises

Jeffrey Sachs argued in 1985 that the outward orientation of the East
Asian economies had saved them from the developing country debt cri-
sis that ravaged Latin America.75 Now, ten years later, it is possible to
reassess his hypothesis with a greater time span and a larger number of
country observations. Is there evidence that openness to trade helped to
avoid macroeconomic crises in the 1980s? To address this issue we clas-
sify countries according to their trade orientation in the 1970s and then
examine whether the countries that were open in the 1970s were less
likely to experience a severe macroeconomic crisis in the 1980s and
1990s. For these purposes, we define a severe macroeconomic crisis by
any one of the following three occurrences:
-A rescheduling of foreign debt in the Paris Club (official creditors)
or the London Club (commercial bank creditors).
-Arrears on external payments (including debt servicing), as re-
ported by the IMF.
-An inflation rate in excess of 100 percent per year.
We expect that closed economies will be more likely than open econ-
omies to fall into one or more of these crises, for several related reasons.
First, and most important, closed economies often borrowed heavily
from foreign sources in order to overcome economic stagnation caused
by the deeper problem of poor economic policies.76 The reliance on debt
was a temporary expedient, and resulted in a debt crisis when creditors
withdrew support from further lending. Second, closed economies ori-
ented investment toward nontraded goods, and thus lacked the foreign
exchange earnings to service the debts. Third, closed economies tended
to have a higher level of state involvement in the economy, including the
ownership of state enterprises. Loss-making state enterprises added sig-
nificantly to the overall fiscal burden of many governments in the 1980s,
contributing to the onset of high inflation and foreign debt crises.
75. Sachs (1985).
76. See Sachs (1994).

Table 14. Developing Country Openness and Macroeconomic Crisisa
Macroeconomic No macroeconomic
Openness crisis in 1980s crisis in 1980s
Open in 1970s 1 16
Not open in 1970s (i) 59 14
a. In a test of independence the chi square is 34.8 (significance level <0.000).
There are seventeen developing countries that had an open trade pol-
icy in the 1970s. Of these, only Jordan succumbed to a macroeconomic
crisis after opening: debt reschedulings in 1987 and 1992, and external
payments arrears in 1993. The first episode of macroeconomic difficul-
ties followed a sharp cutback in foreign aid from the oil-rich states of the
region as a result of the collapse of world oil prices in 1986. Following
the 1990 Gulf War, Jordan experienced a more serious macroeconomic
shock, which cost it heavily in remittance and export earnings.
There were seventy-three closed developing countries in the 1970s.
Of these, as many as fifty-nine experienced a severe macroeconomic cri-
sis: forty-nine had a debt crisis; fifty had external payments arrears; and
nineteen had inflation above 100 percent (most manifested more than
one of these crises). Table 14 summarizes the relative frequencies of
openness and macroeconomic crisis. A x2 test on the null hypothesis of
independence between trade policy in the 1970s and macroeconomic cri-
sis in the 1980s is rejected at the 0.000 level.
Rather than focus on the large majority of countries that succumbed
to crisis, it is easier to assess the fourteen that did not: Bangladesh, Bots-
wana, Burundi, China, Colombia, Hungary, India, Iran, Nepal, Papua
New Guinea, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe. Of these,
Botswana had opened its economy by 1979; Colombia maintained very
cautious and moderate policies both in trade and in finance; both Hun-
gary and India, in fact, flirted with a debt crisis which was narrowly
averted; China began the 1980s with very little debt because it had bor-
rowed little during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76; Bangladesh, Bu-
rundi, Nepal, and Rwanda are among the world's poorest countries and
have little, if any, access to loans on commercial terms, which has prob-
ably saved them from generating a debt crisis. Moreover, Burundi and
Rwanda have been subject to extreme internal unrest.

Recent Reforms and Economic Performance
The previous section compared countries with long-standing policies

of open trade during the nineteen-year period 1970-89, with countries
that were closed during some or all of the period. In this section, we ex-
amine the growth effects of trade liberalization in developing countries
that have opened their economies since 1975. By our assessment, there
are thirty-eight non-communist reformers that have opened their econo-
mies since 1975 and sustained the opening until 1993. Venezuela at-
tempted trade liberalization between 1989 and 1992, but the policy was
then reversed. Another thirty-six countries in our sample did not even
achieve a temporary liberalization during 1980-93. In addition to this
group of countries, we also examine the recent growth performance of
the twenty-five post-communist economies of eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union, to see how growth performance relates to trade
reform and overall economic reform.
Here, we stress again that trade reform is almost always accompanied
by a much broader range of reforms, including macroeconomic stabili-
zation, internal liberalization (for example, the end of price controls),
legal reform, and often extensive privatization. This has been especially
clear in the post-communist countries. In almost all cases, trade reform
has been part of the overall institutional harmonization with the ad-
vanced market economies. Our results cannot, therefore, distinguish
between the effects of trade policy per se, and the effects of other parts
of the policy package that accompany the trade measures. While we
view the direct effects of trade liberalization (increased competition,
specialization, and reduced rent-seeking) as important contributory fac-
tors for growth, we put off attempting to tease out the specific contribu-
tions to growth of the various parts of a standard reform program until a
future study.
We note also that the very-short-term growth consequences of a trade
reform will depend importantly on the inherited structure of the econ-
omy. In the post-communist countries of eastern Europe and the former
Soviet Union, the long period of central planning left the economy with
an enormously overgrown heavy industrial sector, evident, for exam-
ple, in the high levels of coal and steel production relative to the rest of

output. In those economies, therefore, the end of central planning (and

the sharp drop in armaments production in the former Soviet Union) re-
sulted initially in a significant drop of industrial output. This was true
throughout the region, independent of the specific nature of a reform
program. In the East Asian communist economies, by contrast, the in-
dustrial sector was much smaller at the start of reforms, so they did not
experience a drop in industrial production when trade and other market
reforms were first introduced.77
Table 15 examines the economic growth of recent developing country
reformers by comparing the annual growth for country i in four inter-
vals: I, = [T - 10, T - 4], I2 = [T - 3, T - 1], I3 = [T, T + 2], and
I4 = [T + 3, N], where N is either [T + 10] or the latest year for which
data are available (usually 1993), whichever is earlier. T is the year of
trade liberalization, that is, the year in which trade policy first satisfies
the five criteria for openness described above. By estimating the follow-
ing regression model, we test whether growth is higher or lower on aver-
age after the onset of open trade:
(5) Git = Oti + Y2D2t + Y3D3t + Y4D4t + ,it
where Djt = 1 for t belonging to Ij and Djt = 0 otherwise. This equation

allows for a separate fixed effect on growth for country i, plus a timing
effect for intervals 2, 3, and 4. The error term, Eit, is an (i.i.d.) random
variable. If trade liberalization raises growth relative to the "distant
past" (years [T - 10] through [T - 4]), then Y3and y4 should be positive.
If trade liberalization raises growth relative to the "recent past" (years
[T - 3] through [T - 1]), then (Y3 - Y2) and (Y4 - Y2) will be positive. If
trade reform is initially contractionary, and subsequently expansionary,
we would find Y3< 0 and y4 > O.
The estimated coefficients are as follows, with t statistics in parenthe-
ses below:
(6) Git = i- (0.88)D2t + (1.09)D3t + (1.33)D4t)+ Eit.
(- 1.66) (1.98) (2.25)

According to these results, economic growth is indeed higher after trade
liberalization than in the distant past, both in the near term [T,T + 2],
77. See Sachs and Woo (1993) and Sachs (1995c) for comparisons of eastern Europe
and East Asia.

Table 15. Real Per Capita Growth Rates of the Recent Reformersa
Annual averages over subperiods (percent)
Reform
Countmy year tE [-10, -4] tE[-3, -1] tE[O, 2] tE[3, n]
Argentina 1991 -0.10 - 3.83 6.55
Benin 1990 0.25 - 3.25 0.91 0.38
Bolivia 1985 - 1.78 - 5.06 - 2.88 1.14
Botswana 1979 13.96 9.87 7.31 5.31
Brazil 1991 4.08 - 2.32 - 0.08
Cameroon 1993 - 3.47 - 9.17 - 7.68
Chile 1976 1.20 -6.21 4.98 3.44
Colombia 1991 2.54 2.03 1.91
Costa Rica 1986 -3.80 0.87 1.64 2.45
Ecuador 1991 - 1.36 2.05 1.34
El Salvador 1989 -0.93 0.29 0.60 2.83
Gambia 1985 -0.61 -0.14 -1.37 -0.12
Ghana 1985 - 0.55 - 3.93 1.31 1.37
Guatemala 1988 -3.97 - 1.83 0.69 1.21
Guinea 1986 1.40 0.58
Guinea-Bissau 1987 - 1.87 1.15 3.63 0.74
Guyana 1988 - 5.40 - 0.69 -4.50 6.89
Honduras 1991 0.43 -0.08 1.15
India 1994 2.97 4.90 1.00
Israel 1985 3.41 0.38 3.43 1.41
Jamaica 1988 -0.10 0.25 3.22 0.27
Kenya 1993 2.66 - 1.20 - 1.66
Mali 1988 - 2.15 3.21 0.74 0.03
Mexico 1986 3.93 - 1.34 - 1.98 1.03
Morocco 1984 3.01 - 0.46 3.23 -0.00
Nepal 1991 3.35 3.94 0.62
Nicaragua 1991 - 4.45 - 6.25 - 2.84
Paraguay 1991 - 0.27 2.13 - 0.21
Peru 1991 4.09 - 9.68 0.35
Philippines 1988 -2.09 -2.23 2.81 - 1.80
South Africa 1991 - 1.05 - 0.39 - 2.73
Sri Lanka 1991 2.31 2.41 3.90
Tunisia 1989 1.28 -0.45 2.95 3.02
Turkey 1989 - 0.71 4.16 1.67 3.57
Uganda 1988 - 6.58 0.25 3.00 0.96
Uruguay 1990 -0.96 2.56 3.19 0.57
Zambia 1993 - 1.12 -3.90 3.65
Summary statistics
Unweighted average 0.130 -0.718 1.297 1.965
Standard deviation (5.604) (5.347) (3.417) (3.526)
Source: These growth rates are based on real GDP and population data from the World Bank (1994d). When
possible, these data are supplemented with data from national sources.
a. The sample of thirty-seven countries corresponds to the thirty-six countries that opened after 1975, from table
2, and Israel, from table 3.

by an average of 1.09 percentage points per year, and in the more

distant future [T + 3, N], by an average of 1.33 percentage points per
year.78 The near-term gain is significant at (p = 0.10), while the long-
term gain is statistically significant at (p = 0.05). The increase in
average growth is larger when compared with the years immediately
preceding the trade liberalization, since average growth rates are lower
in those years than in the years [T - 10] through [T - 3] (by 0.88
percent per year on average).79
Trade Liberalization and Growth in Transition Economies

The countries of central and eastern Europe have been undertaking
market reforms, including trade liberalization, since 1990, while the
countries of the former Soviet Union have been undertaking market re-
forms since 1992. It is obviously extremely premature to draw strong
conclusions regarding the effects of these reforms on the restoration of
economic growth. Nonetheless, at least some evidence can be adduced
from the five or more years of reform experienced by some parts of the
region.
78. Other statistics for the regression are the number of observations, N = 548, ad-
justed R2 = 0.149; and the F statistic for the overall regression, F = 3.45 (p < 0.001). The
only country dummy that is statistically significant is Botswana, with a dummy variable of
8.14, t = 4.585.
79. It is worthwhile responding to two possible criticisms of these results. First, it
could be objected that if growth outcomes were purely random, and countries reformed
only when growth fell below a critical threshold, then although we would tend to observe
higher growth after reform, it would be incorrect to attribute the higher growth to the re-
form. However, we stress that we are comparing growth after the reforms with growth in
the distant rather than the immediate past, and further, that our period for the distant past
spans seven years.
Second, it is possible that countries may have sorted themselves randomly as reform-
ers and nonreformers. If some grew and others did not, and those that did not closed up
again and thus were eliminated from our group of reformers, we would be left with a biased
sample of reformers with high growth. But we have found few examples of countries that
experienced slow growth after true reform. For example, economies that were temporarily
open in the 1950s and 1960s and subsequently closed again, tended to have high growth
rates during the liberal episode. We have also found that certain countries that are some-
times cited as recent reformers, such as the Dominican Republic in the early 1980s and
Nigeria between 1986 and 1992, actually did not reform sufficiently (by our criteria), while
others that did reform temporarily, such as Venezuela, experienced rapid growth during
the episode of liberalization. Hence we find few examples to suggest that sample selection
bias is an important issue when examining the growth performance of recent reformers.

We are aided in this process by a recent review of the reformexperi-

ence conductedby the EuropeanBankfor ReconstructionandDevelop-
ment(EBRD).80The EBRD rankedeach countryof the regionaccording
to the extent of trade liberalization,as well as several other key cate-
gories of reform,such as privatization,regulatoryreform,and fiscal re-
form. Using these indicators,it is possible to groupthe countriesby the
intensityof reformas well as the timingof its onset, as we do in table 16.
The intensityof reformis measuredon a scale from 1 to 4, with a higher
numbergreaterintensity.Onthe basis of this categorization,we ask two
questions:first,whetherintensivereformersexhibitmoreor less decline
in cumulativeGDP between 1989and 1994;and second, whetherinten-
sive or early reformersenjoy a faster turnaroundin economic growth,
and therebyachieve positive GDP growthby 1994.
Table 16 shows that all of the strong trade reformershad achieved
positiveeconomicgrowthby 1994,while none of the othercountrieshad
done so. On average, the strong reformersalso experienced a smaller
cumulativeloss of GDP between 1989and 1994,thoughthere is consid-
erablevariancein the data. We must stress, however, that since all the
countriesof centraland eastern Europeand the Baltic states are classi-
fiedas strongtradereformers,while none of the states of the formerSo-
viet Union is, we cannot distinguishadequatelybetween the specific
role of tradepolicy andthe manyotherdifferences(geography,politics,
resource endowments)between the two regions that might help to ex-
plain the differencesin growthperformance.At the least we can high-
light that the data are consistent with the notion that strong trade re-
forms have produced a faster turnaroundin growth and a smaller
cumulativedecline. More powerfultests of this hypothesis will have to
wait untilmoretime has elapsed.
Conclusions
The world economy at the end of the twentieth century looks much
like the world economy at the end of the nineteenthcentury. A global
capitalistsystem is takingshape, drawingalmostall regionsof the world
into arrangementsof open tradeandharmonizedeconomic institutions.
As in the nineteenthcentury, this new roundof globalizationpromises
80. EuropeanBankfor ReconstructionandDevelopment(1994).

Table 16. Growth Rates of the Transition Economies

Percent
Strength of Year of Cumulative

trade trade growth Growth
Countiy reform reform 1989-94 1994
Strong reforms
Hungary 4 1990 - 17.94 2.00
Poland 4 1990 - 9.23 5.00
Bulgaria 4 1991 - 26.41 1.40
Czech Republic 4 1991 - 15.49 3.00
Slovak Republic 4 1991 - 19.53 5.00
Slovenia 4 1991 - 13.26 5.00
Albania 4 1992 - 22.89 7.00
Estonia 4 1992 - 29.15 5.00
Romania 4 1992 - 30.79 3.00
Croatia 4 1993 - 31.04 1.00
Latvia 4 1993 - 39.52 3.00
Lithuania 4 1993 - 55.44 2.00
Average - 25.89 3.53
Moderate reforms
Kyrgyzstan 3 1994 -42.30 - 10.00
Russia 3 closed -47.29 - 15.00
Average -42.61 - 12.50
Weak reforms
FYR Macedonia 2 1994 -51.30 -7.00
Moldova 2 1994 - 54.30 - 25.00
Armenia 2 closed - 61.60 0.00
Kazakhstan 2 closed - 51.01 - 25.00
Uzbekistan 2 closed - 11.75 - 3.00
Average -45.99 - 12.00
Weakest reforms
Belarus 1 1994 - 35.93 - 22.00
Azerbaijan 1 closed - 54.32 - 22.00
Georgia 1 closed - 85.35 - 35.00
Tajikistan 1 closed - 70.37 - 25.00
Turkmenistan 1 closed - 38.29 - 20.00
Ukraine 1 closed - 51.36 - 23.00
Average - 55.94 - 24.50
Overall average - 38.63 - 7.58
Source: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (1994, 1995) with national sources for Bulgaria for
1994.

to lead to economic convergence for the countries that join the system.
In this paper we have provided strong evidence of convergence among
open economies during the period 1970-89, as well as evidence of accel-
erated growth in the countries that have recently undertaken market re-
forms.
Our analysis is necessarily impressionistic and imprecise at several
crucial points. We have used trade policy as our measure of economic
management, but we are strongly aware that trade policy represents just
one element-albeit the most important-of an overall economic policy.
Among developing countries, open trade has tended to be correlated
with other features of a healthy economy, such as macroeconomic bal-
ance and reliance on the private sector as the main engine of growth. To
some extent, opening the economy has helped to promote governmental
responsibility in other areas. To that extent, trade policy should be
viewed as the primary instrument of reform. But to some degree, our
measure of trade policy serves as a proxy for an entire array of policy
actions. Only further cross-country analysis, with a more detailed char-
acterization of the entire policy regime, would allow us to distinguish the
growth effects of the various components of economic policy.
It is tempting, at the end of the twentieth century, to believe that the
birth of a global capitalist economy is inevitable. Some have proclaimed
the "end of history" following the collapse of communism. Similarly, in
1910, Norman Angell declared that European wars had come to an end
because war was simply too costly for any rational European govern-
ment. But our historical review should give us profound pause for
thought. Yes, the late twentieth century has certain key advantages over
1910 for the preservation of emerging market institutions. There is the
spread of sovereignty, so that imperial adventures no longer seem to
threaten the global peace. There is the spread of an international rule of
law, largely through institutions such as the World Trade Organization
and the International Monetary Fund. There is the spread of democracy,
which covered some 108 countries in 1994, according to the estimates of
Freedom House.
And yet there are also profound risks for the consolidation of market
reforms in Russia, China, and Africa, as well as for the maintenance of
international agreements among the leading countries. The consolida-
tion of the emerging global arrangements will require the wisdom and

leadership of the leading democracies.8' The spread of capitalism in the

twenty-five years since the start of the Brookings Panel is an historic
event of great promise and significance, but whether we will be cele-
brating the consolidation of a democratic and market-based world sys-
tem at its fiftieth anniversary will depend on our own foresight and good
judgments in the coming years.
APPENDIX
Data
THE DATA SET in this paper begins with the sample of 135 countries in-
cluded in version 5.5 of the data described in Summers and Heston
(1991). For most of these countries, the growth variable (G7089) is calcu-
lated directly from the Summers and Heston data. For seven countries,
Comoros, Ethiopia, Liberia, Tanzania, Nicaragua, Iraq, and Nepal,
G7089 is calculated using 1970 and 1985 data on real GDP, rather than
1970 and 1989 data. Swaziland's G7089 is calculated using real per capita
GDP data from the World Bank for the years 1972 and 1989. With the
single exception of Swaziland, G7089 is measured as average annual
growth in per capita real GDP, and is expressed in a common set of
prices (1985 international prices, in the Summers and Heston termi-
nology).
Out of the Summers-Heston universe of 135 countries, there are 13
countries that do not have adequate growth data, either because they are
not available at all, or because they are not available for a sufficiently
long time span. At the time of writing, these countries are Afghanistan,
Bahamas, Bahrain, Dominica, Grenada, Kuwait, Oman, St. Lucia, St.
Vincent, Solomon Islands, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and United Arab Emir-
ates. After excluding these countries, the sample size falls to 122.
81. See Sachs (1995a) for a discussion of some of the issues facing the advanced coun-
tries as the present global system is consolidated.

JeffreyD. Sachs andAndrewWarner 65
Variables Used to Classify Countries as Open or Closed

The following are the variables used to classify countries as open or
not open for the period 1970-89, and their sources:
BMP70 and BMP80 Black market exchange rate premium, averaged

over the 1970s and 1980s respectively. Source:
Cowitt (1986) with updates from World Bank data
(supplied by Ross Levine).
BMP Dummy variable equal to 1 if either
BMP70 > 0.2, orBMP80 > 0.2.
EXM Dummy variable equal to 1 if a country had a
score of 4 on the export marketing index in the
World Bank study, Adjustment in Africa (Husain
and Faruqee, 1994, p. 238). A score of 4 means
that the country had extreme distortions resulting
from its export marketing board. These boards
are state-run monopsonies that typically purchase
agricultural products at prices much below world
prices, and then resell them at world prices. The
study covered African countries only.
Soc Dummy variable equal to 1 if the country was
classified as socialist in Kornai (1992, table 1.1).
O WQI Variable indicating coverage of quotas on imports
of intermediates and capital goods. It is the own-
import weighted nontariff frequency on capital
goods and intermediates. Includes licensing, pro-
hibitions, and quotas. It is taken from Barro and
Lee (1994) who, in turn, rely on UNCTAD data.
The period covered is 1985-88.
OWQID Dummy variable equal to 1 if OWQI > 0.4.
OWTI Variable indicating average tariffs on imports of
intermediates and capital goods. It is the own-im-
port weighted average tariff rate on capital goods

66 BrookingsPapers on EconomicActivity,1:1995
and intermediates. It is taken from Barro and Lee

(1994) who, in turn, rely on UNCTAD data. Pe-
riod covered is 1985-88.
OPEN Dummy variable equal to 1 for open economies. It
is equal to 0 if a country scored a 1 on either the
BMP variable, the SOC variable, the EXM vari-
able, or the OWQID variable. If a country had
some missing values and was not otherwise ex-
cluded, some effort was made to classify it as
either a 0 or a 1, as is discussed below. The tariff
variable is not used in forming the OPEN variable
because it is redundant: all countries with
OWTI > 0.4 are already classified as closed on
other grounds. If there were insufficient data to
make a judgment, the country was assigned a
''missing" value.
The reasoning behind the adjustments we made to the OPEN variable

is as follows. First, we know that we lack cross-country tariff and quota
coverage data for the 1970s, so we were especially concerned to find
countries that had restrictive trade practices in the 1970s, but had re-
formed by the mid-1980s, and thus appeared open by the OWQI and
OWTI variable. We found one case, Morocco, and changed the OPEN
variable to 0. Other adjustments were made for different reasons. South
Africa followed an inward-looking development strategy throughout the
1970s and 1980s, and this was reinforced from outside as the rest of the
world gradually tightened trade sanctions on South Africa in 1985.
(Source: Lachman and Bercuson, 1992.) Hence, South Africa is rated as
a closed economy. Lesotho and Swaziland were members of the South-
ern African Customs Union and thus were open in relation to the south-
ern African region but closed in relation to the rest of the world. Since
these economies are small relative to the South African market, we con-
sider them inherently ambiguous cases and assign them "missing" val-
ues (Lesotho is a high-growth economy and Swaziland is a low-growth
economy). Botswana is also a member of the customs union but is rated
closed, based on a high black market exchange rate premium. Haiti was
rated as closed, based on the extensive evidence for restrictive trade
practices in Lundahl (1992). Luxembourg is a member of the EEC and

is rated as open. New Zealand is rated as closed, based on evidence that

quantitative trade restrictions covered more than 40 percent of imports
in 1981 and 1983. (Source: Laird and Yeats, 1990, table 4.2.) Australia is
rated as open, based on Caves and Krause (1984).
After these adjustments, there remained nine small countries for
which we had insufficient data to make an informed assessment on the
OPEN variable: Cape Verde, Comoros, Liberia, Iceland, Fiji, Malta,
Panama, Seychelles, and Suriname. Therefore, whenever the analysis
in the paper requires the OPEN variable, the sample size is reduced to
111.
The following variables are used to define the POL dummy variable.
RIGHT Dummy variable equal to 1 if a country scored a 6

or above (higher means more repressive) on either
the political rights index or the civil liberties index
in MacMillan, Rausser, and Johnson (1994, ta-
ble 1, pp. 8-10).
EDU Dummy variable equal to 1 in cases of extremely
disruptive unrest. Intended to capture disruptive
internal or external wars, coups, and revolutions.
Constructed by the authors using several indica-
tors. First, countries were assigned a I if they
scored 0.6 or higher on the REVC70 or REVC80
index in Barro and Lee (1994). In addition, the fol-
lowing countries were assigned a 1 because of
conflicts: Angola (sixteen-year civil war); Bu-
rundi (Hutu rebellion 1973-74, resulting in an esti-
mated 160,000 deaths); Chad (repeated battles
with Moslem rebels in the north); El Salvador
(twelve-year civil war); Ethiopia (extended war
with Somalia over control of the Ogaden region of
Ethiopia); Guatemala (repeated conflicts between
the military rulers and the guerrilla army of the
poor); Iran and Iraq (war in the early 1980s); Is-
rael; Mozambique (protracted civil war in the
1980s); Nicaragua (civil war); Panama (U.S. inva-
sion in the late 1980s); Somalia (see Ethiopia); Sri
Lanka (repeated violence with the Tamil and Sin-

halese separatists); Uganda (invasion by Tanza-

nia); Zimbabwe (revolt against government of Ian
Smith in the late 1970s).
For the RIGHT variable, Hungary and Yugoslavia were assigned a 1

and Cote d'Ivoire and Hong Kong were assigned a 0. The list of coun-
tries and their scores on these variables are listed in table Al.
The other variables used in this paper, along with sources, are as fol-
lows. The organization is by table.
Variables Used in Tables
Tables 1-5
EPA External payments arrears, as rated by the IMF's
Annual Report on Exchange Restrictions.
DC Country had a multilateral debt rescheduling,
based on data in the World Debt Tables of the
World Bank.
HI Country had inflation above 100 percent, as re-
corded in the International Financial Statistics
Yearbook, 1994, p. 64.
The sources for the dating are described in detail below for each coun-
try. Data for table 5 are from the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development's Transition Report (1994).
Table 8
POP601LAND Population in 1960 (in thousands) divided by land
area (in square meters).
POP60 Population in 1960.
CW Dummy indicating British Commonwealth status,
from Famighetti (1993).
OLDS Dummy indicating old state, set to 1.0 for coun-
tries that achieved independence before World
War II.

Table Al. Variables Used to Construct the POL Variablea
Repression Extremely
Country of rightsb Socialistc disruptive unrestd
Algeria 1 0 0
Angola 1 1 1
Argentina 0 0 1
Bangladesh 0 0 1
Benin 1 1 0
Bolivia 0 0 1
Burkina Faso 0 0 1
Burundi 1 0 1
Cameroon 1 0 0
Cape Verde 1 0 0
Central African Republic 1 0 1
Chad 1 0 1
China 1 1 0
Congo 1 1 0
Ecuador 0 0 1
El Salvador 0 0 1
Ethiopia 1 1 1
Gabon 1 0 0
Ghana 0 0 1
Guatemala 0 0 1
Guinea 1 0 0
Guinea-Bissau 1 0 1
Haiti 1 0 0
Hungary 1 1 0
Iran 0 0 1
Iraq 1 0 1
Israel 0 0 1
Liberia 0 0 1
Malawi 1 0 0
Mali 1 0 0
Mauritania 1 0 0
Mozambique 1 1 1
Myanmar 1 0 0
Nicaragua 0 1 1
Niger 1 0 0
Panama 0 0 1
Philippines 0 0 1
Poland 1 1 0
Rwanda 1 0 0
Somalia 1 1 1
Sri Lanka 0 0 1
Syrian Arab Republic 1 0 0
Tanzania 1 0 0
Thailand 0 0 1
Togo 1 0 0
Uganda 0 0 1
Yugoslavia 1 1 0
Zaire 1 0 0
Zimbabwe 0 1 1
Source: See appendix for complete definitions of variables and sources.
a. I indicates yes.
b. The dummy variable RIGHT.
c. The dummy variable SOC.
d. The dummy variable EDU.
69

TL The dependent variable is a dummy taking the

value 1.0 if the country had opened by 1970 and
stayed open.
Table 11
GDP70 Real GDP per capita in 1970 (1985 international
prices) from Summers and Heston version 5.5.
GDP89 Real GDP per capita in 1989 (1985 international
prices) from Summers and Heston version 5.5.
G7089 Real per capita growth rate of GDP per year:
G7089 = [ln(GDP89) - ln(GDP70)]/19. Note that
this variable is calculated differently for a few
countries, as listed at the beginning of this ap-
pendix.
SEC70 Secondary school enrollment rate. Source: Barro
and Lee (1994).
PRI70 Primary school enrollment rate. Source: Barro
and Lee (1994).
GVXDXE Ratio of real government "consumption" spend-
ing net of spending on the military and education,
to real GDP. Source: Barro and Lee (1994) who,
in turn, used Summers and Heston version 5.5.
REVCOUP Number of revolutions and coups per year, aver-
aged over the period 1970-85. Source Barro and
Lee, 1994.
ASSASSP Number of assassinations per million population
per year, 1970-85. Source: Barro and Lee (1994).
PPI70DEV The deviation of the log of the price level of in-
vestment (PPP investment divided by exchange
rate relative to the United States) from the cross-
country sample mean in 1970. Source: Authors'
calculation based on the PISH5 price data in
Barro and Lee (1994).

JeffreyD. Sachs and AndrewWarner 71
INV7089 Ratio of real gross domestic investment (public

and private) to real GDP, averaged over the pe-
riod 1970-89. Source: Barro and Lee (1994) who,
in turn, used Summers and Heston version 5.5.
Table 12
DS YR Average accumulation of secondary schooling
over the period 1970-85. Specifically, DSYR =
[ln(S YR85) - ln(S YR70)]115,where S YRxxis per-
son years of secondary schooling divided by the
total population over age fifteen.
DP YR Accumulation of primary schooling, calculated in
the same manner as DS YR.
Table 13
X71 Primary export intensity in 1971. Ratio of primary
exports to total exports in 1971, with both numer-
ator and denominator expressed in nominal dol-
lars. Primary exports are defined as agriculture,
minerals, fuels, and metals. These correspond to
SITC (revision 1) categories 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 68.
Source: For all countries except Taiwan and
South Africa, World Bank, World Tables, 1994.
Data for Taiwan were obtained from the Taiwan
Statistical Data Book (Republic of China, 1993).
Data for South Africa include exports of raw dia-
monds and gold and were obtained from South Af-
rica's Bulletin of Statistics, December 1972 and
June 1992. Data for Singapore were estimated as
0.01, based on GDP and labor force data indi-
cating that Singapore produces no mining, no pri-
mary energy, and only a very small amount of
agriculture, forestry, and fishing products. The
data for Bangladesh are for 1972 rather than 1971.
The data for Cameroon were set to 1.0; they ex-
ceeded 1.0 using the published data.

X89 Primary export intensity in 1989, calculated in the

same manner as X71.
Table 14
The growth data for the recent reformers are real per capita growth
from the World Tables of the World Bank. We did not use the data pro-
vided by Summers and Heston because we needed recent growth data.
Background on Country Classifications
Algeria Never open. The black market premium averaged

350 percent during 1985-90. Some trade liberal-
ization began in the second stage of its reform pro-
gram in 1991, but implementation was interrupted
by political turmoil. Source: World Bank, Trends
in Developing Economies, 1994 (TIDE), p. 6.
Angola Never open. A protracted civil war has plagued
the country since independence. Source: TIDE,
p. 12.
Argentina Open since 1991. The average nominal tariff level
for manufacturing was 141 percent in 1958 (Little,
Scitovsky, and Scott, 1970, p. 163). The liberal-
ization in 1976-80 did not sufficiently reduce ef-
fective rates of protection (estimated at 88 percent
for all of manufacturing in 1980, from Cavallo and
Cottani, 1991, table 3.19). The dating of the liber-
alization in 1991 is based on TIDE, p. 17.
Australia Open since 1964. Australian tariffs were high by
OECD standards, but the mean tariff did not ex-
ceed 40 percent. Source: Unpublished data from
the World Bank. The date of liberalization is
based on the evidence of the gradual relaxation of
quantitative restrictions and import licensing in
IMF, Annual Report on Exchange Restrictions,
various issues.

Austria Open since 1960, based on the date of full cur-

rency convertibility following membership in the
European Free Trade Association. The IMF's
Annual Report on Exchange Restrictions pro-
vides evidence of the liberal trading environment
since 1960.
Bangladesh Never open. A phased import liberalization is in
progress but implementation is very slow.
Source: TIDE, p. 29.
Barbados Open since independence (November 30, 1966).
Barbados qualifies on all the criteria for the period
1970-89.
Belgium Open since 1959. Member of the EEC. The aver-
age tariff in the Common Market was less than 40
percent in 1962. Source: Balassa (1965, table 1,
p. 580). No major increase in protection 1962-93.
Convertibility established in 1959.
Benin Open since 1990. Not rated as open before 1990
because it has a score of 4 on its export marketing
board (Husain and Faruqee, 1994, p. 238). By
1990, Benin's score was 3, and the discussion in
TIDE, p. 45, dates the start of the reform as 1989.
Bolivia Open 1956-79, closed 1979-84, open since 1985.
The dating is based on black market premium data
and information on trade policy in Sachs and Mo-
rales (1988).
Botswana Closed 1966-79, open since 1979. Membership in
the Southern African Customs Union makes it
hard to rate its trade policy as open or closed. It is
open in relation to the southern African market,
but since the countries in the customs union adopt
South Africa's external tariffs, it is closed in rela-
tion to the rest of the world. In the end, we rated
Botswana as closed in the 1970s, based on its high
black market premium data. The date of the open-
ing in 1979 is based on the same data.

Brazil Open since 1991. Brazil is rated as closed before

1991, based on the evidence in Coes (1991). Spe-
cifically, the average effective protection rates in
1967 and 1973 exceed 40 percent (see table 4.1).
In addition, the index of trade liberalization (see
figure 4.1) indicates that 1973 was the most liberal
year during the period 1947-82, so we rate this pe-
riod as insufficiently liberal by our standards. A
high black market premium also disqualifies Bra-
zil in the early 1960s and the period 1975-89. The
1991 dating is based on the reforms of the Collor
administration.
Burkina Faso Never open. Not rated as open before 1990 be-
cause it has a score of 4 on its export marketing
board (Husain and Faruqee, 1994, p. 238). The
state-controlled export monopsony is still in oper-
ation. There is no evidence in TIDE of a major re-
cent reform effort.
Burundi Never open. Not rated as open before 1990 be-

board (Husain and Faruqee, 1994, p. 238). There
is no evidence in TIDE of a major recent reform
effort.
Cameroon Open since 1993. Not rated as open before 1990

dating of the recent reform is based on TIDE,
p. 78.
Canada Open since 1952, when it accepted article VIII
status with the International Monetary Fund.
Cape Verde Insufficient evidence on trade policy.
Central African Never open. Not rated as open before 1990 be-
Republic cause it has a score of 4 on its export marketing
is no evidence in TIDE of a major recent reform
effort.

Chad Never open. Chad received a score of 4 on its ex-

port marketing board and thus is considered
closed before 1990. In 1990 this rating was re-
duced to a 3, so that Chad would potentially be
open from this date. However, because there is
considerable discussion of the lack of progress on
trade reforms in TIDE, p. 93, we do not classify
Chad as a reformer.
Chile Open since 1976. Chile is classified as closed in
the 1950s, based on the accounts of import prohi-
bitions, licensing, and multiple exchange rates in
various issues of the IMF's Annual Report on Ex-
change Restrictions covering the years 1950-61.
For the 1960s, Chile is not rated as open because
the mean black market premium was 54 percent.
The 1976 dating for the liberalization is based on
Dornbusch and Edwards in Bosworth, Dorn-
busch, and Laban (1994, pp. 84-85); as well as Pa-
pageorgiou, Michaely, and Choksi (1991, vol. 7,
figure 2.3).
China Never open. Rated as socialist in Kornai (1992).
Trade policies have been progressively liberal-
ized since 1978, but the trading system was still
rife with quantitative restrictions at least through
1994. (See text for further discussion.)
Colombia Open since 1986. Colombia has had a complicated
mixture of tariffs and quantitative restrictions
since 1931. Its classification as closed is based on
the fact that the index of trade liberalization in
Garcia Garcia (1991) is fairly constant between
1950 and 1983, as well as evidence that average
tariffs exceeded 40 percent in 1962, 1971, and 1973
(Diaz-Alejandro, 1976, p. 108). The liberalization
episodes in 1954, 1966, and 1979 were too short to
qualify as sustained liberalizations. The dating for
the opening is based on evidence in Garay (1991)
that average tariffs rates fell below 40 percent in
1986 and have stayed low up to the present.

Congo Never open. Not rated as open before 1990 be-

was an attempt at liberalization in 1987, but it did
not go far enough (TIDE, p. 117). The export mar-
keting board was still rated as a 4 in 1990.
Costa Rica Open 1952-61, closed 1962-85, open since 1986.
In the 1950s Costa Rica had no exchange restric-
tions on foreign payments and no import licensing
(IMF, Annual Report on Exchange Restrictions,
various issues). Imports could be obtained freely
at an exchange rate that was 17 percent more de-
preciated than the rate at which exports had to be
surrendered to the central bank. In 1960 Costa
Rica joined the Central American Common Mar-
ket (CACM), so 1961 is chosen as the date of
closure. The mean common external tariff in the
CACM was 40 percent in 1966 (Carnoy, 1972,
p. 14). Costa Rica had a mean black market
premium in excess of 20 percent in the period
1960-64. The mean external tariff was 53 percent
before 1986 (World Bank, 1992a, p. 86). The dat-
ing for the reform in the 1980s is based on the de-
cline in the black market premium to 1 percent
(1985-89) and the 1986 tariff liberalization, which
reduced the mean tariff to 26 percent (World
Bank, 1992a, p. 86).
Cote d'Ivoire Never open. Received a score of 4 on its export
marketing board, and thus is considered closed
before 1990 (Husain and Faruqee, 1994, p. 238).
In 1990 this rating was reduced to a 3. However,
there are still extensive nontariff barriers, sched-
uled to be phased out by 1995. Source: TIDE,
p. 125.
Cyprus Open since independence. There are some infant
industry tariffs but the mean has never exceeded
20 percent. Trade liberalization has been helped

by the European Community's Mediterranean

policy. Cyprus can export most products at low
tariffs to the EEC and reciprocates with low tar-
iffs on EEC products. There are no quantitative
restrictions. Source: Wilson (1992).
Denmark Open since 1959. Although Denmark was not an
original member of the EEC or the EFTA, its
trade policy was harmonized with the rest of Eu-
rope. Dating is based on timing of convertibility
throughout Europe.
Dominican Never open. The liberalization episode of
Republic 1981-86 did not go far enough. Another liberaliza-
tion started in 1991, but has not progressed sig-
nificantly. Source: TIDE, p. 135.
Ecuador Open 1950-82, closed 1983-90, open since 1991.

The dating of the initial liberal phase is based on
the IMF's Annual Report on Exchange Restric-
tions from the early 1950s, which states that im-
port licenses were, "in most cases," issued freely,
and De Janvry, Sadoulet, and Fargeix (1991, p.
58), who report implied trade taxes for the period
1970-85. Extensive trade reform was started in
1990. By 1991 virtually all the nontariff restric-
tions had been eliminated. The maximum tariff
was 35 percent in 1990. Source: Economist Intelli-
gence Unit, Country Report 3, 1991; and TIDE, p.
140.
Egypt Never open. The state-led development planning

and import-substituting industrialization policies
were established in the mid- to late 1950s, under
Nasser. We lack hard data to gauge whether
Egypt was open in the years immediately after
World War II. Egypt has certainly not been open
since 1960, the start of the first five-year period for
which we have black market premium data. Be-
tween 1960 and 1980 the mean premium was 83

percent. Furthermore, UNCTAD data in the mid-

1980s report an average effective import tariff of
49 percent (Barro and Lee, 1994). The assessment
that Egypt's recent reforms are insufficient to
qualify as open is based on TIDE, p. 145.
El Salvador Open 1950-61, closed 1962-89, open since 1989.
El Salvador assumed the obligations of article
VIII in 1946. In the 1950s and early 1960s import
licenses were not required, and there were few re-
strictions on payments or transfers abroad (IMF,
Annual Report on Exchange Restrictions, various
issues). In 1960, El Salvador joined the Central
American Common Market (CACM), so 1961 is
chosen as the date of closure. The mean common
external tariff in the CACM was 40 percent in 1966
(Carnoy, 1972, p. 14). The mean external tariff
was 53 percent 1966-86 (World Bank, 1992a,
p. 86). The 1989 dating is based on TIDE, p. 151.
Ethiopia Never open. Civil war and devastating famines
started in the 1970s and continued through the
mid- 1980s (Famighetti, 1993, p. 762). A transi-
tional government assumed power in May 1991,
and a fragile truce prevailed in 1992. It is still too
early to rate this as a reforming economy.
Finland Open since 1960, based on the date of full cur-
European Free Trade Association. The IMF's
Annual Report on Exchange Restrictions pro-
vides evidence of the liberal trading environment
between 1960 and the present.
France Open since 1959, based on date of full currency
convertibility. Member of the EEC. The average
tariff in the Common Market was less than 40 per-
cent in 1962, Source: Balassa (1965, table 1,
Gabon Never open. Not rated as open before 1990 be-

board (Husain and Faruqee, 1994, p. 238). The ex-

port marketing board is still rated as a 4 in 1990.
TIDE, p. 177, only mentions a reform program in
1994.
Gambia Reform 1985. Not rated as open up to 1985 be-
cause of a score of 4 on its export marketing board
(Husain and Faruqee, 1994 p. 238). The Gambia
receives a 2 in 1990, and Husain and Farugee re-
port virtually no administrative controls on for-
eign exchange allocation. The 1985 dating is based
on the discussion of extensive trade liberalization
efforts in TIDE, p. 181.
Germany Open since 1959, based on date of full currency
cent in 1962. Source: Balassa (1965, table 1, p.
580). No major increase in protection 1962-93.
Ghana Open since 1985. The black market premium fell
from 1,098 percent (average 1981-86) to 3 percent
(1990), falling below 20 percent in 1985. In 1990, 0
percent of foreign exchange allocation was con-
trolled, and only two items were subject to non-
tariff barriers. The World Bank rates it as a 4 on
the export marketing board in 1990, but the dis-
cussion in TIDE, p. 191, has no mention of this as
a constraint on openness. Hence we rate Ghana as
open from 1985.
Greece Open since 1959. Tariffs and quotas were already
low in mid-1950s (Eichengreen, 1994, table 1, p.
35, and Kottis, 1989, p. 335) and convertibility
was established in May 1959 (IMF, Annual
Report on Exchange Restrictions, 1960, p. 8).
Guatemala Open 1950-61, closed 1962-88, open since 1988.
Guatemala assumed the obligations of article VIII
in 1947. In the 1950s and early 1960s there was no
import licensing nor significant restrictions on
payments or transfers abroad (IMF, Annual Re-

port on Exchange Restrictions, variousissues). In

1960, Guatemala joined the Central American
Common Market (CACM), so 1961 is chosen as
the date of closure. The mean common external
tariff in the CACM was 40 percent in 1966 (Car-
noy, 1972, p. 14). The mean external tariff was 53
percent 1966-86 (World Bank, 1992a, p. 86). The
election of a civilian government in 1985 started a
period of reform. The 1988 dating is based on
TIDE, p. 196.
Guinea Open since 1986. Not open before 1986 due to a
rating of 4 on its export marketing board (Husain
and Faruqee, 1994, p. 238). In 1990 the World
Bank reports a black market premium of 8 percent
and gives Guinea a rating of 1 (most liberal) on its
export marketing system. The 1986 dating is
based on TIDE, p. 200, which reports a compre-
hensive dismantling of state-led development in-
stitutions, including external trade protection.
Guinea-Bissau Open since 1987. Not open before 1987 due to a
rating of 4 on its export marketing board (Husain
and Faruqee, 1994, p. 238). In 1990 the World
Bank reports a black market premium of - 2 per-
cent and gives Guinea a rating of 1 (most liberal)
on its export marketing system. The 1987 dating is
based on TIDE, p. 205.
Guyana Open since 1988. A high mean black market pre-
mium (298 percent) disqualifies Guyana between
about 1975 and the late 1980s. Prior to 1988 there
was an extensive list of import prohibitions and
restrictions, which have since been greatly re-
duced (World Bank, 1993b, p. 32). In 1991 Guy-
ana adopted the Caribbean Community (CARI-
COM) common external tariff schedule, with
rates that average well below 40 percent. The 1988
dating is based on the assessment in TIDE, p. 210,
that this was the decisive year of reform.

Haiti Never open. Extensive tariffs and quantitative re-

strictions protected domestic manufacturing from
1949 through 1986 (Lundhal, 1992, p. 407). There
are special export zones in Haiti where firms are
allowed to import intermediate products, assem-
ble them, and then export, but these represent a
small fraction of the economy. Since 1986 liberal-
ization has been extremely slow. In 1990 the black
market premium was still 40 percent (Lundahl,
1992, p. 418).
Honduras Open 1950-61, closed 1962-90, open since 1991.
Honduras assumed the obligations of article VIII
in 1950. In the 1950s and early 1960s there were no
significant restrictions on payments or transfers
abroad (IMF, Annual Report on Exchange Re-
strictions, various issues). In 1960 Honduras
joined the Central American Common Market
(CACM), so 1961 is chosen as the date of closure.
The mean commnonexternal tariff in the CACM
was 40 percent in 1966 (Carnoy, 1972, p. 14). The
mean external tariff was 53 percent 1966-86
(World Bank, 1992a, p. 86). An extensive trade re-
form between 1990 and 1992 included the elimina-
tion of import permits and administrative foreign
exchange allocation. Import tariffs were reduced
to a range of 5-20 percent (TIDE, p. 214).
Hong Kong Always open.

Hungary Open since 1990. Source: European Bank for Re-
construction and Development (1994).
India Open since 1994. Rated as closed before 1991 due
to very high tariffs and elaborate quantitative re-
strictions dating from the early 1950s (Bhagwati
and Desai, 1970). The 1994 dating is based on the
start of a trade liberalization program (TIDE,
p. 223), and average tariff data in Krishna and Mi-
tra (1994, p. 5).

Indonesia Open since 1970. Indonesia had a dual exchange

rate system that ended April 17, 1970 (Pitt, 1991).
The important trade liberalization measures were
introduced between May 1966 and July 1967. Im-
port licensing was eliminated in October 1966
(Pitt, 1991, p. 181). The median tariff rate had
fallen below 40 percent by 1970 (Pitt, 1991, table
5.10, p. 90, which relies on Rosendale, 1981,
p. 276).
Iran Never open. Iran maintained tight restrictions on
imports through the annual publication of import
lists by the Ministry of National Economy. The
IMF's Annual Report on Exchange Restrictions
for 1953 states that the ministry has prohibited a
"large number of goods," although there is no
quantification. The evidence of numerous admin-
istrative controls on foreign trade provided by
Amuzegar (1977) leads us to classify Iran as
closed. Black market premium data disqualify
Iran after 1975.
Iraq Never open. Black market premium averaged 230
percent in the 1980s. Import quota system was in
place in the early 1950s. All imports that com-
peted with Iraqi new industries were on the pro-
hibited list.
Ireland Open since 1966. Dating is based on membership
in the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area from 1966, and
data provided by 0 Grada and O'Rourke (1994,
pp. 17, 29).
Israel Open since 1985. Israel initially pursued an im-

port-substituting industrialization policy in the
1950s. Since then, there has been gradual liberal-
ization, so the question is when Israel first quali-
fies as open. An import liberalization took place
between 1962 and 1965, but Pack (1971, table 4.6)
reports rates of nominal protection by sector that

clearly average above 40 percent in 1965. In addi-

tion, the mean black market premium was 25 per-
cent in the 1970s, so Israel does not qualify as
open during that decade. In 1975 Israel became an
associate member of the European Community;
at the same time, many countries followed the
lead of the Arab countries in boycotting trade with
Israel. The dating of 1985 is based on the signing
of a free trade agreement with the United States
and successful inflation stabilization. Sources:
Razin and Sadka (1993) and Halevi and Baruh
(1991).
Italy Open since 1959, based on date of full currency

convertibility. Member of the EEC. Average tar-
iff less than 40 percent in 1962. Source: Balassa
(1965, table 1, p. 580). No major increase in pro-
tection 1962-93.
Jamaica Open from independence (1962) to 1973, closed

1973-89, open since 1989. The classification as
open in the 1960s is based on various issues of the
IMF's Annual Report on Exchange Restrictions,
and data showing that the mean black market pre-
mium was only 6 percent. The IMF's 1967 report
states that "most goods may be imported freely
under an open general license" (p. 348). Jamaica is
disqualified between the early 1970s and the mid-
1980s, based on a high mean black market pre-
mium. The 1973 and 1989 datings are based on
TIDE, p. 239. Referring to the recent reforms,
Williamson (1992) states: "Quantitative restric-
tions eliminated and tariffs lowered to 20 percent
to 30 percent for most items" (p. 373).
Japan Open since 1964, when Japan assumed the obliga-

tions of article VIII and established full currency
covertibility (IMF, Annual Report on Exchange
Restrictions, 1965). Average tariff was less than

40 percent in 1962. Source: Balassa (1965, table 1,

Jordan Open since 1965. Jordan appears to be a case of a

moderately restrictive trade regime that neverthe-
less qualifies as open by our standards. The gov-
ernment has required import licenses since at
least 1951. In the 1950s Jordan allowed importing
only by registered importers who were allocated
foreign exchange based on the government's an-
nual import plan. In the 1960s Jordan introduced
a list of prohibited imports, but this included only
afew products. By the mid-1960s the IMF reports
state that import licenses were granted freely ex-
cept for items on these lists (see, for example,
IMF, Annual Report on Exchange Restrictions,
1967, p. 361). The black market premium was low
throughout the period 1960-90 (the mean is 4 per-
cent), indicating that import restrictions did not
lead to severe excess demand for foreign ex-
change. In 1987 the average import tariff was be-
low our 40 percent threshold, at 33 percent (Hu-
sain and Faruqee, 1994, p. 37), and it has fallen
since then.
Kenya Open 1963-67, followed by closing, and then re-

form in 1993. When it became independent in
1963, Kenya entered into a customs union that
had internal free trade and a common external tar-
iff with Tanzania and Uganda. The external tariff
was 30 percent for most goods, but 0 percent for
equipment, and 75 percent for luxuries such as
cosmetics (Barve 1984, p. 27). The black market
premium averaged less than 20 percent during the
1960s. Hence Kenya qualifies as open by our cri-
teria during this period. The liberalization ended
with the Exchange Control Act of 1967 and was
followed by a gradual increase in licensing and
tariffs in the 1970s. Since the late 1980s there has

been extensive trade liberalization, but the black

market premium was higher than 20 percent in
1989 and 1990. Source: Husain and Faruqee
(1994) and the Economist Intelligence Unit, vari-
ous reports.
Korea Open since 1968. The exchange rate was unified
by the mid-1960s. The black market premium fell
below 20 percent in the period 1965-69. A gradual
reduction in import tariffs started in the mid-
1960s. Source: Nam (1989, pp. 165-66). By 1968,
the average tariff was below 40 percent (Collins
and Park, 1989, table 9.12).
Lesotho Not rated. Ambiguous case due to membership in
the Southern African Customs Union. (See dis-
cussion in appendix above.)
Liberia Not rated. Insufficient data on trade policy.
Luxembourg Open since 1959, when convertibility was estab-
lished. The average tariff in the Common Market
was less than 40 percent in 1962. Source: Balassa
(1965, table 1, p. 580). No major increase in pro-
tection 1962-93.
Madagascar Never open. Not rated as open before 1990 be-
board (Husain and Faruqee, 1994, p. 238). The ex-
port marketing board was still rated as a 4 in 1990.
There is no mention of significant reform since
(TIDE, p. 294).
Malawi Never open. Closed since early 1970s, based on a
high black market premium as well as a rating of 4
on its export marketing board (Husain and Far-
uqee, 1994, p. 238). Not rated as a recent re-
former, based on discussion in TIDE, p. 299.
Malaysia Open since independence (1963). The black mar-
ket premium has never exceeded 2 percent. In
1965 the IMF states that "most imports are per-

mitted freely under open general licenses" (IMF,

Annual Report on Exchange Restrictions, 1965,
p. 347). Malaysia qualifies on all of our trade indi-
cators and there is no evidence of any major pol-
icy changes in the 1970s (TIDE, p. 304).
Mali Open since 1988. Pursued state-led development
between independence in 1960, and 1988. State
monopolization of exports (Husain and Faruqee,
1994, p. 238) and extensive import licensing (IMF,
Annual Report on Exchange Restrictions, 1965,
p. 353). Scores a 3 on the export marketing index
in 1990; TIDE, p. 314, dates the reforms as start-
ing in 1988.
Malta Not rated, due to insufficient data on trade poli-
cies.
Mauritania Open since 1992. Rated closed during 1970-90 be-
cause of a high black market premium, and a 4 on
the export monopoly index. TIDE, p. 320, states
that 1992 marks the decisive intensification of re-
forms.
Mauritius Open since independence in 1968. Source: TIDE,
p. 324.
Mexico Open since 1986. A combination of moderate tar-
iffs and extensive import licensing since the early
1950s. In the 1960s, 80 percent of tariff lines were
covered by licensing (Bueno, 1971, p. 181). A high
black market premium also disqualifies Mexico in
the early 1980s. The 1986 dating for the reform is
Morocco Open from independence in 1956, to 1964, closed
1964-84, open since 1984. Imports could be made
freely from French franc area countries up to 1964
various issues). Introduction of a list of permitted
imports, and prohibition of everything else, in
1964 (IMF, Annual Report on Exchange Restric-

tions, 1965). In 1980 the mean unweighted tariff

was 47 percent (IMF, Annual Report on Ex-
change Restrictions, 1995, p. 33). The dating of
the 1984 liberalization is based on Nsouli and oth-
ers (1995, pp. 32-33). By the mid-1980s the quota
coverage, mean tariff, and black market premi-
ums were all below our thresholds for openness.
Mozambique Never open. Not rated as open before 1990 be-

board (Husain and Faruqee, 1994, p. 238). TIDE,
p. 351, does not present any evidence of a major
recent reform effort.
Myanmar Never open.
Nepal Open since 1991. Not rated open between 1960

and 1990 because of a high black market exchange
rate premium. Not rated open in the 1950s, based
on evidence in Shreshtha (1981). The dating of the
reform in 1991 is based on the discussion in TIDE,
p. 356.
Netherlands Open since 1959, based on date of full currency

cent in 1962. Source: Balassa (1965, table 1,
New Zealand Open since 1986. Quantitative trade restrictions

covered more than 40 percent of imports in 1981
and 1983, and had fallen below 40 percent by 1986
(Laird and Yeats, 1990, table 4.2).
Nicaragua Open 1950-60, closed 1961-90, open since 1991.

In the 1950s Nicaragua had import licensing and
surcharges for acquiring foreign exchange for im-
porting, but the licenses were freely granted and
the average surcharge did not exceed 40 percent
various issues). The open period ends in the 1960s

since the mean black market exchange rate pre-

mium exceeds 20 percent. In addition, Nicaragua
adopted the high external tariffs of the Central
American Common Market in the period 1966-86.
The 1991 dating for the reform is based on TIDE,
p. 361.
Niger Never open. Not rated as open before 1990 be-
p. 365, does not present any evidence of a sus-
tained recent reform effort.
Nigeria Never open. The black market premium averaged
68 percent for the period 1965-90. We lack good
evidence from the early 1960s. The period 1986-
92 may qualify as a liberalization (see TIDE,
p. 365, for example), but the average black market
premium was 135 percent in 1985-89, so we do not
rate this as a liberalization.
Norway Always open. Full currency convertibility in 1960
following membership in the European Free
Trade Association. The IMF's Annual Report on
Exchange Restrictions provides evidence of the
liberal trading environment since 1960.
Pakistan Never open. Insufficient data on the period 1947-
55. In 1955 the average import tariff exceeded 40
percent (Islam, 1981, table 5.2, p. 60). Extensive
import licensing through 1983. Pakistan's rating
on Guisinger and Scully's (1991, p. 232) index of
import liberalization would have to exceed 16, in-
dicating tariffs less than 50 percent, to qualify as
open, and it never does during the 1960-83 period.
The judgment that recent trade reforms have not
gone far enough is based on TIDE, p. 391.
Panama Not rated, due to insufficient data on trade policy.
Papua New Guinea Never open. The average black market premium
was 27 percent in 1980-85. We lack data on trade

policy to rate either the period between indepen-

dence (1975) and 1980, or the late 1980s.
Paraguay Open since 1989. The black market premium av-
eraged 68 percent and 38 percent in the first and
second halves of the 1980s, respectively. The
black market premium was eliminated when the
exchange rate was unified in 1989. Trade liberal-
ization also was implemented in 1989. By Decem-
ber 1989 the simple average tariff was 16.2 percent
(World Bank, 1992b, p. 54).
Peru Open 1948-67, followed by closing, and then open
since 1991. Thorp and Bertram (1978) is the
source for the dating of the temporary liberaliza-
tion episode. It is supported by a low black market
premium, which was 2 percent during 1960-64
and 8 percent during 1965-69. Peru is rated as
closed during 1970-90 because of a high black
market premium. The 1991 date for the recent re-
form is based on TIDE, p. 410.
Philippines Open since 1988. The assessment that the Philip-

pines was not sufficiently open in the 1950s is
based on data in Intal and Power (1990, table 2.4)
that the average rate of protection exceeded 40
percent in the 1960s, and also on Papageorgiou,
Michaely, and Choksi (1991, vol. 2, figure 2.12,
p. 24) who rate the 1950s as less open than the
1960s. For later periods, we rely on our indica-
tors, and on Shepherd and Alburo (1991) and
TIDE, p. 414.
Poland Open since 1990. Source: European Reconstruc-
tion and Development Bank (1994).
Portugal Always open. The dictatorship in power 1928-74

did not introduce extremely restrictive tariffs
(Avillez, Finan, and Josling, 1988, p. 19). Charter
member of the European Free Trade Association
(EFTA) in 1959. Portugal was granted a special

timetable for removing tariffs, but average tariff

levels were low and applied mainly to agricultural
products. The postrevolution government in 1974
sought a delay on the tariff reductions but under-
took no increase in protection rates (Avillez, Fi-
nan, and Josling, 1988). We have found no source
that reports average tariff rates for Portugal, but
based on our reading of Avillez, Finan, and Jo-
sling (1988) and our knowledge of the tariff rates
of other EFTA countries, it is very unlikely that
Portugal's average tariff exceeded 40 percent.
Trade liberalization resumed in 1980.
Rwanda Never open. Not rated as open before 1990 be-
board (Husain and Faruqee, 1994, p. 238).
Senegal Never open. Not rated as open before 1990 be-
p. 437, does not present any evidence of a major
recent reform effort.
Sierra Leone Never open. Not rated as open before 1990 be-
state-controlled export monopsony is still in oper-
ation. The average black market premium was 408
percent in 1985-90. There is no evidence in TIDE
of a major recent reform effort.
Singapore Open since independence in 1965.
Somalia Never open. Average black market premium ex-
ceeded 20 percent in the 1970s and 1980s. Rated
as socialist by Kornai (1992). In 1992 the United
Nations declared Somalia a country without a
government (Famighetti, 1993, p. 808).
South Africa Open since 1991. Source: Lachman and Bercuson

(1992, pp. 32-37). South Africa has traditionally

followed an import-substitution and inward-look-

ing development strategy. This was reinforced by
externally imposed trade and financial sanctions
in 1985. The United States and several other
countries began lifting trade sanctions in the sum-
mer of 1991. Thus although it is hard to put a pre-
cise date on qualification as open, 1991 seems a
reasonable assumption.
Spain Open since 1959. In July 1959 Spain unified its ex-
change rate, liberalized imports, and made its cur-
rency convertible with the currencies of other Or-
ganization for European Economic Community
(OEEC) countries (IMF, Annual Report on Ex-
change Restrictions, 1960, p. 284). The sum of
tariffs and indirect taxes on imports averaged 18.1
percent in 1961, and fell gradually for the next 27
years (Gamir, 1990).
Sri Lanka Open 1950-56, closed 1956-77, open 1977-83,

closed 1983-91, open since 1991. The dating is
based on Cuthbertson and Athokorala (1991). The
dating for 1983 is based on the annual black mar-
ket premium data in Cowitt (1986).
Swaziland Not rated. Inherently ambiguous case due to

membership in the Southern African Customs
Union. (See discussion in appendix above.)
Sweden Open since 1960, based on the date of full cur-

European Free Trade Association. No black mar-
ket exchange rate premium; average tariff less
than 40 percent in 1962. Source: Balassa (1965, ta-
ble 1, p. 580). No major increase in protection
1962-93 (IMF, Annual Report on Exchange Re-
strictions, various issues).
Switzerland Always open. Full currency convertibility. Mem-

bership in the European Free Trade Association

since 1960. No black market exchange rate pre-

mium, and low tariffs since at least 1950.
Syrian Arab Open 1950-65, closed since 1965. The dating of
Republic the initial phase of liberalization is based on the
1950-66, which does not report any significant im-
port barriers. This open era ended in 1965, when
a state trading company, SIMEX, was granted a
monopoly on the purchase of imports. In 1965
SIMEX purchases represented 55 percent of all
imports (IMF, Annual Report on Exchange Re-
strictions, 1966, p. 521). Classified as closed dur-
ing the 1980s due to a high quota coverage and a
high black market premium. The country had
multiple exchange rates for everything in 1993,
and current account restrictions, according to the
1993. The average effective import tariff was 27
percent in the mid-1980s. In 1980s the quota cov-
erage was above 40 percent and the black market
premium was well above 20 percent. There is no
evidence of recent reform.
Taiwan Open since 1963, based on Lin (1993).
Tanzania Never open. Not rated as open before 1990 be-
board (Husain and Faruqee, 1994, p. 238). Tanza-
nia is not rated as a reformer since 1990, due to the
discussion in TIDE, p. 475.
Thailand Always open. Source: Phongpaichit (1992).
Togo Never open. Not rated as open before 1990 be-
board (Husain and Faruqee, 1994, p. 238). Togo is
not rated as a reformer since 1990 due to the dis-
cussion in TIDE, p. 486.
Trinidad and Never open. Based on our indicators and the dis-
Tobago cussion in TIDE, p. 490.

Tunisia Open since 1989. Rated not open in the 1960s be-
cause the black market premium exceeded 20 per-
cent. The dating of reform is based on Nsouli and
others (1993, pp. 26-29). Extensive import licens-
ing was in place in 1985, covering 82 percent of im-
ports. A five-year trade reform program started in
1986, precipitated by the decline in oil prices in
January 1986. The first stage (1986-88) saw liber-
alization of intermediates and capital goods; the
second stage (1988-91) saw further liberalization
of consumer goods. By 1989 the coverage of non-
tariff barriers had fallen below 40 percent for the
first time. The black market premium data show a
small premium (7 percent) starting as early as
1975. The IMF's Annual Report on Exchange Re-
strictions records no current account restrictions
in 1989.
Turkey Open 1950-53, closed 1954-88, open since 1989.

The dating of the first liberalization episode is
based on Togan (1994, p. 20) and Krueger (1978).
The economy was closed after a massive crop fail-
ure in 1954 (Togan, 1994). The black market pre-
mium exceeded 20 percent throughout the 1960s.
Trade liberalization was started in the 1980s, but
not until 1989 did average nominal tariff rates fall
below 40 percent (Togan, 1994, tables 2.11 and
2.12, pp. 52-53).
Uganda Open since 1988. Not rated as open before 1988

1988 dating is based on TIDE, p. 538.
United Kingdom Always open. No black market exchange rate pre-

mium, and average tariff was less than 40 percent
in 1962. Source: Balassa (1965, table 1, p. 580).
No major increase in protection 1962-93. Con-
vertibility established in 1959.

United States Always open. No black market exchange rate pre-

mium, and average tariff was less than 40 percent
in 1962. Source: Balassa (1965, table 1, p. 580).
No major change in protection 1950-93.
Uruguay Open since 1990. Uruguay is rated as closed in the
1950s, based on various issues of the IMF's An-
nual Report on Exchange Restrictions and the
discussion in Favaro and Spiller (1991). High av-
erage tariff rates, given in Favaro and Spiller
(1991, table 2.10), mean that Uruguay was also
closed from 1961 through 1982. The 1990 dating is
Venezuela Open 1950-59, closed 1960-89, open 1989-93,
closed since 1993. In the 1950s Venezuela was
bound by a trade agreement with the United
States that kept protection low (Allen, 1977,
p. 92). The lack of exchange restrictions during
this period is confirmed by the IMF's Annual Re-
port on Exchange Restrictions. In 1959 a new gov-
ernment used the treaty's escape clause and
sharply increased protection (Allen, 1977, p. 92).
The dates for the second temporary liberalization
are based on TIDE, p. 530.
Yemen Arab Always open. North Yemen, which has been in-
Republic dependent since 1918 as the Yemen Arab Repub-
lic, is rated as open due to its low black market
premium, low quota coverage, and an average tar-
iff of less than 40 percent. South Yemen (the Peo-
ple's Democratic Republic of Yemen) merged
with North Yemen in 1990; we do not rate it sepa-
rately, prior to that date.
Yugoslavia Never open. Socialist, according to Kornai
(1992).
Zaire Never open. Zaire has never pursued open eco-
nomic policies, and there has been no recent re-
form under Mobutu. Source: TIDE, p. 548.

Zambia Open since 1993. Not rated as open before 1990

1993 date is based on TIDE, p. 538.
Zimbabwe Never open. The Federation of Rhodesia (Zim-
babwe) and Nyasaland, established in 1953, had
very high rates of protection. This economic iso-
lation was intensified with the imposition of
United Nations sanctions in 1966. Source:
Ndlovu (1994, pp. 10, 59). Rhodesia, and after its
independence in 1980, Zimbabwe, had a black
market premium that averaged above 90 percent
in the 1970s and 1980s. It is also rated as closed
because it is on Kornai's (1992) list of socialist
economies. It is not rated as a recent reformer,
due to the discussion in TIDE, p. 553.

Comments
and Discussion
Anders Aslund: Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner have written a

broad and most stimulating paper. They have included a large number
of countries and formulated a clear hypothesis which can be statistically
tested, thanks to a strict categorization.
Their main conclusion is that reform works and that there is no invin-
cible poverty trap, which is easy to agree with. Even if countries experi-
ence falling GDP for years, they can catch up by adopting the right eco-
nomic policies. A second conclusion is that openness to global
integration is the crucial criterion of good economic policies, and the
rest follows. That is less obvious. A third, less elaborated, theme is why
some countries adopt the right policies at certain times, and others do
not. Here the reasoning is neither complete nor stringent.
While the denial of an invincible poverty trap seems convincing,
there are several factors to consider. The authors bring up a great many,
but there are others; for instance, migration and various forms of inter-
national intervention. If we ignore racism and look upon all factors of
production as transferable, it is indeed difficult to accept that a poverty
trap is given once and for all.
However I feel uneasy with the word convergence, because it sug-
gests that there is one ideal that everyone can learn; that the leaders can
do no wrong or unlearn this ideal, and that their challengers can do no
better. Coming from Sweden, I am firmly convinced that good economic
policies and institutions can be unlearned and abolished. Argentina is a
country with a longer record of economic unlearning. We are consider-
ing very long periods and this convergence may be temporary, lasting
only a few decades.
Sachs and Warner have simply defined their criteria for an open econ-
omy, found the statistics for their categorization, and tested their
hypotheses. In this fashion, they have largely avoided the question:
96

Which are the necessary prerequisites for successful reform? They ar-
gue that relatively free foreign trade and a reasonably convertible cur-
rency are sufficient conditions for the success of economic reform; they
assume, for instance, that macroeconomic stabilization follows.
The correlation between openness to foreign trade and the ability of
poorer countries to catch up is convincing, but the causality needs to be
proven further. What roles do other factors play? Usually, a government
adopts a sensible policy covering many fields, and trade liberalization is
only one aspect. For instance, liberalization and macroeconomic stabili-
zation are usually introduced in parallel, in one package.
In recent years Sachs has presented a number of alternative lists of
the four to six factors essential to the success of economic reform. ' All
of them seem quite sensible. It would be useful to test these factors as far
as possible to find the truly crucial preconditions of success. Common
suggestions have been: openness to foreign trade, domestic liberaliza-
tion, convertibility, macroeconomic stabilization, international finan-
cing, a pegged exchange rate, mass privatization, a social safety net, and
certain political criteria (strong leader, insightful political elite, civil so-
ciety, manageable interest groups, political pluralism, public educa-
tion). Apart from international financing, all of these criteria are institu-
tional, which makes testing more complicated.
The liberalization of foreign trade and the introduction of a convert-
ible currency are hardly sufficient conditions for economic growth. A
country with a very open economy can have bad incentives in the form
of excessive taxes and public expenditures, and stay at a suboptimal
equilibrium for decades. Sweden is an obvious example. In a recent pa-
per Sachs has written about the entitlement trap in eastern Europe, par-
ticularly in Hungary.2
Similarly, the importance of a social safety net has been exaggerated
in the discussion of former socialist countries. I am struck by its absence
in discussions of East Asia. It is difficult to understand why a social
safety net is enormously important in eastern Europe and of no conse-
quence in East Asia. Clearly the social safety net has a bigger place in
political rhetoric than in sound economic analysis. Even Russia had so-
cial expenditures of 21 percent of GDP in 1994.3No country at this level
1. See, for example, Sachs (1992, 1995d, 1995e).

2. Sachs (1995b, 1995c).
3. Shapiro (1994).

of economic development has been successful with such large social ex-
penditures.
An issue that is likely to prove important, and that applies to third
world countries as well, is privatization. The degree of privatization will
contribute to our understanding of the transition of the former commu-
nist countries in the longer run. Therefore we should include the relative
size of the private sector as a plausible precondition for success.
Previously, Sachs made a strong case for international financing, but
that is missing from this paper.4 It would have been interesting to have
seen a discussion of the role of international financing in successful eco-
nomic reform here. However, the case may be hard to prove because
international financing has been connected with very different kinds of
conditionality.
The, Soviet Union gave a lot of foreign aid, but it was conditional on
devastating economic policies. The Nordic countries have given huge
amounts of aid to socialist countries in Africa, particularly to Tanzania,
on the understanding that they build African socialism. The West gave
export credits to benign communist states such as Yugoslavia under
Josip Broz Tito, Poland under Edward Gierek, and Hungary under
Janos Kadar, so that they could maintain liberal communist policies.
None of this aid did much good.
Clearly, international financing is beneficial only if it is accompanied
by the right conditionality, but views of what is right have changed very
fast. As a result there is great skepticism of the benefits of foreign finan-
cing. A key question is: Under what conditions is international financing
objectively beneficial? Which conditions are really necessary, and
which are superfluous or even harmful? Until we can provide clear an-
swers to these questions, it will be difficult to convince people of the
need to provide international financing to developing countries.
Probably the most fun part of the paper is the discussion of why re-
forms happen, but it is not fully elaborated. It contains very interesting
points, for example, that ideology and elites are more important than in-
terest groups in countries with poor political structures. But the number
of possible causes is large and more factors should be brought into the
discussion. For instance, the paper discusses the significance of land,
although natural resource endowment in general appears more relevant.
I know that Sachs and Warner are writing another paper on the theme
4. Sachs (1995d).

that natural resources imply rents, and that if there are a lot of rents in a
society, rent-seeking develops, which is the opposite of profit-seeking
and the sound economic policies that lead to growth. This kind of rea-
soning should be included in the first part of this paper.
It is surprising that the authors do not find statistical evidence that
small countries can liberalize their foreign trade regime more easily than
large ones. There are strong reasons why small countries should tend to
liberalize earlier than large ones. The politics of reform is much easier in
a country with less political complexity, and the costs of the economic
distortions caused by protectionism are much more forceful in a small
economy than in a large economy, such as China. I wonder if this lack
of evidence may reflect some flaw in methodology. If you distinguish be-
tween regions, it might turn out that the smallest countries in each region
tend to liberalize most. Notably there are many small countries in Af-
rica, which has not been very liberal overall, but few in the generally
more liberal Asia.
A minor point concerns the comment that the Meiji restoration was
the first shock therapy in history. While it certainly can qualify as shock
therapy, it was not the first. The big liberalizations in Europe in the mid-
dle of the nineteenth century were outstanding examples, especially the
massive deregulation in Britain in 1846. It is noteworthy that this was
followed by three decades of laissez faire because the legal system and
the public administration were too weak to be effective, and excessive
reliance on them would have exacerbated corruption.
Finally, on the outlook for the future the paper compares our time
with the end of the nineteenth century to argue that a global capitalist
system is taking shape. Yet this builds upon two assumptions: first, that
trade policy is the driving force, and second, that trade policy is set
firmly on a liberal track. Considering how difficult it was to conclude the
Uruguay Round and to convince the U.S. Congress to vote for the rati-
fication of the GATT and the NAFTA, the commitment to trade liberal-
ization does not appear all that strong.
If we focus on something other than trade liberalization, the parallel
with the end of the nineteenth century does not hold. Another key fea-
ture of the period before 1914 was financial stability and currency stabil-
ity, whereas our time is characterized by extreme financial instability.
Failure to deal with currency instability typically leads to protectionism.
So which comes first, financial stability or foreign trade regime? I fear

that our understanding of the causality between these two factors is too
limited to warrant the degree of optimism that Sachs and Warner ex-
press.
This worry is further aggravated by the state of international politics.
As the authors rightly point out, the period before 1914 was character-
ized by British world dominance. The end of the cold war appears to
have brought an end to U.S. world dominance. Today the United States
neither perceives sufficient international threats nor has sufficient inter-
est to spend the resources on foreign policy necessary to stay a world
leader. Nobody else is prepared to take up world leadership. Therefore
the current political situation is reminiscent of the situation immediately
after World War I, at the time of the Versailles peace treaty.
So what are we to expect in this situation? We are likely to see inter-
national crises developing, perhaps in the currency sphere, and no one
will be, strong enough to deal with them. For global economic success,
we need international institutions that can handle major international
economic problems. However the institutional innovations since the
end of the cold war have been miserable: the European Bank for Recon-
struction and Development, the Maastricht treaty, and the Common-
wealth of Independent States. The League of Nations and the Interna-
tional Labor Organization, which emanated from the Versailles peace
process, appear masterpieces in comparison.
Stanley Fischer: Sachs and Warner have given us an interesting, chal-

lenging, and in places splendidly written, tripartite paper, ranging over
the last two centuries and the entire globe, with views that run the gamut
from Marx and Engels to Pollyanna, and ending with a degree of caution
that, while appropriate, is not consistent with the rest of the paper.
I will discuss the paper in the order in which it is presented, starting
with the global economy of a century ago, then turning to the reasons
that the liberal-market-capitalist model lost favor in the 1930s and 1940s,
then to the empirical results, and finally, to what we should make of it
all.
The Global Economy

Many aspects of the global economy are indeed closer now to what
they were a century ago than to what they were fifty years ago. At the

close of the nineteenth century countries were linked through trade, as

well as through massive capital flows corresponding to current account
deficits and surpluses on a scale, relative to GDP, that would hardly be
acceptable today. The international capital markets were highly inte-
grated in at least two senses: first, that rates of return in the major mar-
kets of London, New York, and Paris moved together and, as a result of
the invention of the telegraph, very rapidly so; and second, that, as
Sachs and Warner tell us, the British colonies and dominions, much of
Latin America, and Russia borrowed in those markets to finance devel-
opment. Then, as now, there were occasional financial panics and debt
difficulties in the developing countries, the Argentina-related Barings
crisis of 1890 among them. I will come back to the question of the role
played by the gold standard in promoting these capital flows.
Sachs and Warner point to the Universal Postal Union (UPU) and the
International Telegraph Union as early exemplars of international insti-
tutions, but those are technical institutions, the running of which in-
volves very little that is genuinely political.' Rather, the international
system was run mainly by Britain, in the framework of the gold stan-
dard, with the Bank of England acting as lender of last resort-albeit not
systematically or with much thought to its international obligations.
We need to take a moment to reflect on the picture of the success of
the international system painted in the famous quote from Keynes. His
description of the London gentleman, probably yet abed, who com-
mands the world's resources through his telephone, applied directly to
very few people. The benefits of globalization in the British colonies
probably accrued largely to the European settlers, not to the natives. No
doubt there was a trickle down from the growing prosperity of the set-
tlers to the natives who worked for them, but that was-except in the
case of a few missionaries-largely the work of the invisible hand. The
general lack of explicit concern for the colonized must have contributed
to the economic philosophy of the early-postcolonial leaders, to which
Sachs and Warner refer.
It is hard to judge from this distance to what extent global living stan-
dards were converging at the end of the nineteenth century. Labor mi-
gration to new countries must have helped bring about convergence
1. My LSE tutor, the late Leonard Schapiro, once asked me why no one studies the
successful international organizations, like the UPU, rather than those that do not work. I
did not take the hint, but perhaps someone else will.

among people of European origin, but we do not have evidence of con-

vergence among non-European countries or among people of non-
European origin. The evidence by Williamson quoted in the paper re-
lates largely to European countries. Almost certainly, labor mobility
played an important role in bringing about whatever degree of conver-
gence was attained in that era.
Policy and Ideological Changes

Sachs and Warner are right to characterize Keynes's 1933 comments
on the benefits of autarky as muddleheaded. But they very much under-
estimate the role of the Great Depression and of the apparent success of
the Soviet model in the 1930s in bringing about the change in thinking
that they deplore. Indeed, Keynes was speaking at a time when Britain
was doing better than the United States, after it had moved away from
its more liberal trade policies of the period up to 1930.
In the 1930s the United States economy went into deep depression
from which it emerged very slowly; full employment returned only with
a war-driven increase in aggregate demand. In the words of Don Patin-
kin, "the period was one of fear and darkness as the Western world
struggled with the greatest depression that it had known."2 By contrast,
the Soviet economy, according to the data and eyewitness accounts,
was bounding ahead under the Stalinist planning regime that began in
1928. Further, wartime planning in the victorious countries succeeded
not only in mobilizing resources for the war, but also in maintaining full
employment-and in the United States and the United Kingdom, as well
as in many other countries, increasing prosperity.
It is not hard to see why views on the role of the state changed be-
tween 1914 and 1945. It is more remarkable that the United States and
Britain, in 1944 and 1945, managed to impose their vision of a liberal
trading system on the architecture of the international system that
emerged at Bretton Woods. A clear-headed look at the evidence of the
last few decades at that point should have led most people to view the
market model with suspicion, and a large role for the state with approba-
tion-and it did.
2. Patinkin (1978, p. 3).

The Evidence
After providing us with their Olympian view of world economic his-
tory over the last century, Sachs and Warner turn to the evidence of the
last quarter century. One of their main conclusions is quite extraordi-
nary: that countries with open economies will converge to the same level
of income, although admittedly it will take a long time.3 This result pro-
vides so much comfort to the international agencies that in my official
role, I should accept the conclusion and move on. But it is nonetheless
necessary to check the details of the argument.
First, while it is impossible to categorize countries perfectly, the
groupings used in this paper do raise difficulties. I feel about them much
as I do about most newspapers, that they are very accurate on matters
about which I know little. I know for sure that Zimbabwe was not a so-
cialist country in 1970; I do not believe that Jordan has been consistently
open since 1970; Israel's trade reforms began in 1963, certainly not in
1985, and it did suffer from macroeconomic crises after opening; it is odd
to have both India and Hong Kong classified as open in 1995, when their
degrees of openness are so different; it is unclear why Lesotho and Swa-
ziland are categorized as open and South Africa as closed, when all three
belong to a customs union. Of course, any such summary scheme is
bound to have difficulties.
Second, by starting in 1970, the authors stack the deck against the
import-substituting strategy. Whatever happened later, Latin American
and African countries did quite well in the 1950s and 1960s, despite their
perverse regimes. We should not be surprised that it took so long for
them to open up.
The strength of the Sachs-Warner results is surprising, given that the
question that is being looked at, that of the influence of openness on
growth, has been extensively studied before. While the early result that
openness contributes to growth finds increasing support from recent
work, no one has found such extraordinarily categorical results. Per-
haps they have to do with the noncontinuous nature of the openness
variable here, whereas it is generally continuous in other papers. It is
3. Ben-David (1994) shows greater convergence among countries that trade more with
each other, a result that points in the same direction as Sachs and Warner, but is more
qualified.

particularly surprising that this paper reaches stronger conclusions than

the World Bank's famous 1987 World Development Report, which was
so roundly criticized for overreaching.
One key question is whether to believe the argument that openness
will lead to absolute rather than conditional convergence. I cannot see
any basis for that conclusion. There are reasons to think that steady-
state per capita income levels in different countries are bound to differ,
as a result of differences in saving rates, different rates of investment in
human capital, and so forth. After all, income levels differ among states
in the United States, they will always differ among individuals, and they
will likely always differ among countries. Perhaps we can define conver-
gence differently, to say that countries have converged if all individuals
with the same amount of human potential have the same earnings (or
utility) in whatever country they live-and perhaps by the time such
convergence becomes relevant we will be able to measure human poten-
tial. In the meantime, the claim of absolute convergence is hard to
accept.
The result that the labor-to-land ratio is the variable that determines
the timing of liberalization is surprising. The argument seems to assume
that the country is a democracy. Possibly the labor-to-land ratio is serv-
ing as a proxy for the country's size.
Sachs and Warner make two other claims that need further examina-
tion. The first is that no country that liberalized trade failed to grow. It
is not clear how to define the trade regime of the zone franc in Africa,
but trade with France, at least, was open. Yet these countries failed to
grow during much of the 1980s. The second claim is that no country that
liberalized subsequently suffered from a macroeconomic crisis. The ob-
vious counterexample here is Mexico; as noted above, Israel is another.
Conclusions
This paper does not address the implications of the major change in
the international system since Bretton Woods-the opening of the capi-
tal account. Sachs and Warner's results show that countries that open
to trade tend to converge. What about countries that open to capital
movements? Logically, opening to capital movements should speed
convergence. But, of course, globalization of capital flows also tends to
punish bad policies and reward good policies more than before. With

monetary instability likely to impede capital flows, the need for a credi-
ble monetary policy becomes greater: that may help explain why the
gold standard was part of the institutional structure within which capital
flowed internationally a century ago.
Appropriately, Sachs and Warner conclude on a sober note. Open-
ness is not enough to produce growth; stable macroeconomic policies,
structural policies, and institutions are needed too. There are huge prob-
lems of development in Africa, and also in some other countries. There
is no assurance that this moment of ideological convergence will last in
economics. The sobriety is justified, but so is much of their optimism.
General Discussion
Whether the correlation between openness and growth can be largely
attributed to the beneficial effects of trade received a range of com-
ments. T. N. Srinivasan noted that trade policy and growth are both en-
dogenous variables, making it hard to establish causality. He criticized
growth regressions in general because of such endogeneity and because
of measurement errors. He referred to some unpublished papers of Mar-
cel Dagenais, at the University of Montreal, which show serious biases
in such regressions due to measurement errors. Andrew Warner replied
that the timing of events supported the causal interpretation in the pa-
per. Policy choices on openness after World War II were generally made
early in the postwar period or at the start of independence, before the
1970-89 period used in calculating the growth rates. The discussion of
the postwar period in the paper indicates that policy choices at this time
were based largely on intellectual and political considerations. In addi-
tion, the evidence in the paper on openness and macroeconomic crises
measures openness in the 1970s and crises in the 1980s.
Srinivasan also pointed out that the simplest version of neoclassical
trade theory suggests that openness should have only a level effect, not
a long-run growth effect. Making trade into an engine for growth re-
quired a resort to vague externalities. Greg Mankiw interjected that the
level effect predicted by the neoclassical model still takes time to fully
work itself out, and so appears to cause growth in time series. James
Duesenberry suggested another scenario linking trade and growth.
Combining restrictive trade practices with overvaluation leads to an ex-
change crisis in which scarce export revenue gets used up by the import-

substituting industries, bottlenecking expansion in other industries. The

macroeconomic crisis comes when the country attempts further expan-
sion anyway. Rudiger Dornbusch accepted the view that openness,
broadly defined, contributes to growth through the exchange of ideas,
technology, and factors of production. But he argued that merchandise
trade is only a marginally important part of the openness that provides
these benefits.
Sachs agreed that many elements of reform packages are crucial. The
developing countries' choice of a closed trade policy was only part of a
way of life under state-led industrialization. Trade liberalization alone
would not be sufficient and should be interpreted as a proxy for the more
far-reaching programs of reform that generally come with it. However,
he regarded trade reform as the single most powerful element of these
programs, both because of its direct effects and because open trade
forces adoption of other parts of the reform agenda. Trade exerts this
influence by imposing more rigorous competition, altering the political
economy, constraining the government's macroeconomic policies and
manipulations in the economy, and subjecting institutions that want ac-
cess to international markets to the scrutiny and conditionality of the in-
ternational environment.
The categorization of countries as open or closed drew discussion.
James Duesenberry criticized the yes or no nature of the openness vari-
able. Using Sri Lanka's 1977 reforms as an example, he argued that
there is important variation in the degree of openness among countries.
Sri Lanka had policies for pushing exports, restricting imports, and deal-
ing with exchange shortages. For coconuts alone they had an export tax,
a maximum local price, a replanting subsidy, and a fertilizer subsidy.
Sachs conceded that the criteria used in the paper are necessarily some-
what arbitrary and that it is difficult to pin down just when a country be-
comes open. But he argued that the errors about timing are unlikely to
be large when working with five-year intervals. Warner mentioned that,
in many instances, the black market premium was the decisive variable
in categorizing economies as closed or open. The premium is intended
as a measure that reflects an array of restrictive trade practices. But
Srinivasan pointed out that the premium is endogenous and may simply
pick up the thinness of the black market, and that it will be affected by
interest rates and penalties for dealing in the black market. Dornbusch
suggested that the premium is an especially dubious measure if openness
is broadly conceived to apply to more than merchandise trade.

Discussion turned to the political economy of trade policy and the im-
portance of ideology in the choice of economic paths after the war.
Dornbusch noted that anti-fascism was as strong a motivation for eco-
nomic liberalism in postwar Europe as anti-communism. Srinivasan
noted that Nehru was heavily influenced by the Soviet model, citing the
1938 document of the Indian Congress Party's National Planning Com-
mittee which envisioned a number of state interventions including state-
led development of heavy industry and development by import substitu-
tion. He found this influence unsurprising, and felt that the real question
is why governments did not change their policies when the failure of
their initial postwar path became evident, which in India was the case by
the mid-1960s. Why were Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore able to switch,
while India was not?
Duesenberry suggested that two kinds of selection bias might be af-
fecting the paper's results. First, since most countries turned to open-
ness following periods of severe crisis, the new policy was bound to look
good. Second, ignoring reforms that are not maintained until the end of
the sample period means that trade reforms that are not working are
omitted from the sample. He noted that quite a few countries have re-
neged on reform. Ghana, the Gambia, and Kenya have all, at some
point, pulled an about-face. Warner replied that to lessen the effect of
the first bias they compared growth after reform with growth in the dis-
tant past, rather than in the immediate past. And as to the second bias,
they failed to find hard evidence of a country that really had liberalized
(by their standards), and then did an about-face because of slow growth.

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Economic Reform and the Process of Global Integration

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Tue, 24 Sep 2013 08:31:48 AM

Economic Reform and the Process

WHEN THE BROOKINGS Panel on Economic Activity began in 1970, the

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Tue, 24 Sep 2013 08:31:48 AM

integration of the national economy with the world economy. Integra-

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main reason for expecting economic convergence is that the poorer

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The second section examines the impact of postwar trade liberaliza-

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Liberalization and Global Integration before 1970

4. Marx and Engels (1948, p. 225).

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industrial-and hence military-power to challenge traditional societies

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This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Tue, 24 Sep 2013 08:31:48 AM

codes, were widely adopted. These were based on European models,

9. See Owen (1994, pp. 15-16).

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were indeed able to avail themselves of the burgeoning trade opportuni-

13. Reynolds (1985, pp. 34-35).

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the primary producers in Latin America and elsewhere was undermined

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edge, art, hospitality,travel-these are the thingswhich shouldof their nature

The Tripartite World after 1945

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Figure 1. Share of Open Economies in the World, 1960-95a

0.3 - By 1975 population

1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995

long-independent economies of Latin America as well as most of the

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Under these circumstances, the restoration of exchange rate convert-

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deliberately. Nonetheless, the economic effects were similar: a rise in

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ical power both relative to competing domestic interest groups (such as

32. Heckscher (1955).

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geopolitics, rather than domestic interest groups, were the fundamental

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nopoly purchases of agricultural output at below-market prices; and the

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other hand, was typically promoted by authoritarian governments, sid-

The Classification and Timing of Trade Policies

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Table 1. Developing Economies That Have Always Been Opena

42. Summers and Heston (1991).

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Greece 1959 No crisis

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Table 3. Developing Economies That Were Closed at the End of 1994a

We define an open economy as one in which none of the five condi-

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Table 4. Developed Economies with Year of Opening

the periods of temporary openness were often characterized by sus-