of 17 per cent for all developing countries. 19 per cent of African textile
exports were covered by non-tariff barriers (mainly Mauritius to US)
compared with an average of 53 per cent for all developing countries (Ng and
Yeats, 1997). Developed countries do not protect many of the key agricultural
products exported by the poorest African countries, such as coffee, tea, and
cocoa, because they do not have any domestic production to protect. Protection
and subsidies are mainly focused on temperate-zone agricultural products like
wheat, beef and dairy. Only two developing countries (Brazil and Argentina)
are major exporters of these products (Chang, 2007). This implies that the
main beneficiaries of the opening up of agricultural markets in developed
countries would be those countries with strong agriculture such as the US,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand. There is little evidence that liberalization
in products produced and exported by developing countries would have much
impact. An estimate shows that global cotton liberalization would raise the
world price by approximately 13 per cent, giving West African cotton
exporters a 1–2 per cent increase in GDP. By comparison their foreign aid
needs have been estimated to be over 20 per cent of GNP (Sachs et al.,2004).
Influences on openness: technology
The second explanation/hypothesis focuses on technological change: usually
that some form of new or improved infrastructure facilitates the growth of
international trade. This is an interesting case study for those landlocked parts
of the globe who,many argue,need a ‘big push’ in investment to enable them
to participate in global trading networks.
In the US the construction of the Erie canal between 1817 and 1825 reduced
the cost of transport between Buffalo and New York by 85 per cent and cut the
journey time from 21 to 8 days. The US transcontinental railways reduced the
cost of shipping a bushel of wheat from New York to Liverpool by half between
1830 and 1880,then by half again between 1880 and 1914. The Suez Canal,
opened in 1869,reduced the length of a journey from London to Bombay by 41
per cent and from London to Shanghai by 32 per cent. Over the 1850s and
1860s four innovations (the screw propeller, iron hulls, compound engines and
surface condensers) significantly lowered the cost of steam-powered ocean
transport. Iron-hulled ships were 30–40 per cent lighter and offered 15 per cent
more cargo capacity for a given amount of steam power (Clark, 2007:308).
Mechanical refrigeration was developed between 1834 and 1861, and by the
1880s South American meat, Australian meat and New Zealand butter were
being exported to Europe in large quantities. Before the first transatlantic cable
was laid in 1866, it took ten days for information to travel from London to New
York and ten days back; this was reduced to one. There was an immediate 69
per cent reduction in average price differentials for the same financial asset in
the two cities. Over the twentieth century new improvements have included
radio, television, transcontinental telephone links, satellite, computer and
internet technology. Between 1930 and 1990 the unit cost of air transport fell
274 Patterns and Determinants of Economic Growth