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The links between international markets and production and consumption decisions in less-favoured areas (LFAs) often appear rather loose. Hence, it may be questioned whether international trade and economic growth effects trickle down to LFAs. This paper explores the evidence in the literature in which direction and to what extent trade policy may effect the development of LFAs. The literature on modern trade and growth theory spell out conditions of sustained economic growth that are, nearly by definition, opposite to the conditions that hold for LFAs. ‘Old ’ trade and growth theory seem more relevant for understanding the position of LFAs in relation to international trade. Although the institutional economics literature is very much focused at the country level, it is clear that for LFAs with inadequate institutions and infrastructure, the effects of trade-led growth is often irrelevant. Further trade liberalisation will entail small or even detrimental effects for LFAs, with an exception for products suffering from tariff escalation and/or peak tariffs. The prevailing problem seems to be the lacking supply response to (international) price changes. The literature contains evidence that long-term growth strategies for less-favoured areas require the development of institutions and infrastructure, which kept those areas backward. Such processes cannot be modelled easily by the standard type of neo-classical models. A methodology is proposed to empirically assess the impact of international trade policies on specific LFAs.

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ii For decades, Latin America, and particularly Brazil, adopted traditional protectionist policies that created an economic structure based on high import tariffs and prohibitions that generated a severe anti-export bias that discouraged both the growth and diversification of exports. However, the large number of trade agreements worldwide was also implemented in Latin America in the late 1980s, reducing substantially the level of protection in these countries. Brazil was one of the last closed Latin American countries to open its economy to the foreign market in the beginning of the 1990s, with the creation