Does trade cause detrimental specialization in developing economies? Evidence from countries south of the Suez Canal
利用苏伊士运河因战争关闭导致东非国家贸易路线变长这一自然实验，研究发现贸易成本上升并未导致这些发展中国家出现有害的专业化，反而减少了契约密集型产品的出口和生产。
When opening up to trade, countries specialize according to their comparative advantage. However, developing countries are often disadvantaged in production that requires contract enforcement or other institutions. Such specialization could be detrimental, as it might eliminate the demand for property rights in developing countries. I examine the development of product trade patterns in East-African countries that suffered longer trade routes during the war-induced closure of the Suez Canal (Feyrer, 2009), to identify a causal impact of trade costs on specialization patterns. Detrimental specialization does not occur: by contrast, contract-intense exports and production declined in the developing countries of this sample when they were isolated.