Middle East and Central Asia > Kyrgyz Republic

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  • Empirical Studies of Trade x
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André Brotto
,
Adam Jakubik
,
Roberta Piermartini
, and
Fulvio Silvy
This paper studies the impact of the process of accession to the WTO on growth rates in a sample of 150 economies. Unlike GATT-era accessions, WTO accessions involve reforms that extend beyond conventional trade liberalization measures. Using information on the pace of negotiations and requests in the working party's meetings, we construct an index that tracks the progress of reforms in the pre-accession period. We estimate that economies that implemented reforms and made deeper commitments during their WTO accession negotiations grew on average 1.5 percentage points faster than they otherwise would have. These results are robust to instrumental variable estimation and falsification tests.
Mr. Chris Papageorgiou
,
Hans Weisfeld
,
Ms. Catherine A Pattillo
,
Mr. Martin Schindler
,
Mr. Nikola Spatafora
, and
Mr. Andrew Berg
This paper investigates the short-run effects of the 2007-09 global financial crisis on growth in (mainly non-fuel exporting) low-income countries (LICs). Four conclusions stand out. First, for many individual LICs, 2009 was not extraordinarily calamitous; however, aggregate LIC output declined sharply because LICs were unusually synchronized. Second, the growth declines are on average well explained by the decline in export demand. Third, if the external environment facing LICs improves as forecast, their growth should rebound sharply. Finally, and contrary to received wisdom, there are few robust relationships between the cross-country growth variation and the policy and structural environment; the main exceptions are reserve coverage and labor-market flexibility.
Ms. Katrin Elborgh-Woytek
This paper analyzes developments in the structure of trade in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) during the transition decade, and finds that it changed less than in other transition economies. Trade openness of the CIS increased between 1993 and 1997, but has fallen to a lower-level plateau since then owing to regional and country-specific factors. These include slower progress in transition, geographic aspects, restrictions on trade, governance and corruption problems, weak infrastructure, lack of regional cooperation, and political conflicts. Regression results show that trade openness of the CIS countries would likely increase substantially if market-oriented reforms were pursued more vigorously.
Mr. Oleh Havrylyshyn
and
Mr. Hassan Al-Atrash
This paper looks at the progress in transition and the geographic diversification of trade, focusing on two issues--the degree of trade openness and trade integration--for a sample of countries in transition. It concludes that about half of the group of countries sampled are becoming as open as similar market economies, but that many others remain relatively closed. Geographic diversification (to the European Union) is found to be greater the closer is geographic proximity and the more advanced the country is with reforms. The analysis is then extended, in an illustrative way, to show how much larger would be the share of exports to the EU if structural reforms were more ambitious.