Openness and growth: an international perspective

Abstract

International openness via the pursuit of liberal trade and investment policies has become one of the conventional verities of the policy advice handed out by multilateral institutions over the past two decades. Greater international integration is now widely regarded as a pre-requisite for improved economic performance and higher per capita incomes, with the former intellectual consensus that had favoured import-substituting regimes as a means of stimulating industrialisation having been gradually undermined (Kreuger, 1997).