Trade Preferences for Developing Countries: A Survey of Results

Abstract

Over the past thirty years, preferential tariff treatment of the exports of developing countries has become a salient feature of the international trading system. Many of the arrangements began as extensions of current or former colonial relationships, but now have expanded to the point where virtually all developing countries enjoy some sort of special access to the markets of the industrialized countries. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the empirical evidence on the effect of differential treatment of developing country exports, and to draw some larger lessons concerning the position of the developing countries in world trade.