Trade, Inequality and Pro-Poor Growth: Two Perspectives, One Message?

This paper concentrates on results drawn from two strands in the literature. The first focuses on trade as a growth-enhancing policy and its impact on poverty and inequalities. The second strand focuses on the impact of initial inequality on growth (through different micro channels), and on the resulting effects on poverty and inequalities. These two strands are merged and examined from two different perspectives: that of enhancing economic growth and that of reducing poverty. Analysis of the results shows that there is no general evidence in favour of the views that trade liberalisation is good for growth" and that "growth is good for the poor". More precisely