ABSTRACT
A well-known feature of trade liberalisation reforms in developing countries over the past three decades is that a large number of countries have embarked on reforms at times of severe economic difficulties: acute balance of payments crises, rapid inflation or a sharp decline in income and employment.2 Such crisis-driven liberalisations (or reforms ‘under distress’, as Michaely et al. (1991) have dubbed them) are often implemented as part of a comprehensive reform package designed to stabilise the economy and to redress its underlying structural weakness. Reform packages of this nature, which are normally designed and implemented with institutional and financial support from multilateral financial institutions, are popularly know as ‘structural adjustment programmes (SAPs for short).
