Trade as aid

This study focuses primarily on trade preferences offered by the European Union and in particular on the Everything But Arms (EBA) trade preferences regime, which is targeted exclusively on least developed countries (LDCs). The core questions of the investigation are: first, to examine the influence of the EBA preferences on the ACP LDCs' export performance and, second, to compare the impact of the EBA scheme with the one of official development assistance. In addition to their separate effects the combined impact of EBA and aid flows is also analysed. The main results show a very poor performance of the EBA regime. However, the combined effect of the EBA and aid on exports is positive, indicating that the development strategy of the developed countries, in this case of the EU, needs to include both sorts of assistance, aid and trade preferences.