Trade for Development? A New KCG Research Project Focusing on Ghana

The Aid for Trade (AfT) Initiative of the World Trade Organisation aims at supporting developing countries to better deal with trade-related constraints and barriers so that they can be better integrated into the world economy through their engagement in international trade. A key principle behind the AfT Initiative is that free and fair trade can make significant contributions to the economic development and poverty reduction in the developing and emerging countries. Many industrialised countries have initiated new policy measures and/or adjusted the existing ones to support the implementation of the AfT Initiative. One example is Germany. In its strategy paper “Free and Fair Trade as a Driver for Development”, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) outlines crucial policy guidelines for Germany’s strategy for aid for trade and trade-related development cooperation with other countries.

In order to gain more insights into the above mentioned key principle as to trade for development, particularly from the view of developing countries, KCG Researchers, Prof. Holger Görg, Ph.D. and Cecilia Hornok, Ph.D. recently started a new research project “How can Trade Contribute to Development? Micro-based Evidence for Ghana”. A unique firm-level dataset “Ghana Firm Survey” is to be analysed to investigate the relationship between trade and a key aspect of development, namely working conditions of firms, in Ghana. The project will be carried out in cooperation with a research team from Ghana led by Charles Ackah, Ph.D. at the University of Ghana.

KCG thanks the financial support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) for this research project.