When asked to name one proposition in the social sciences that is both true and non-trivial, Paul Samuelson famously replied: `Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage'. Truth, however, in Samuelson's reply refers to the fact that Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage is mathematically...

The theory of comparative advantage is at the core of neoclassical trade theory. Yet we know little about its implications for how nations should conduct their trade policy. For example, should import sectors with weaker comparative advantage be protected more? Conversely, should export sectors...

East European countries have experienced sharp declines in real GDP since 1990. One of the reasons for this decline is the Soviet trade shock caused by the collapse of the CMEA and of traditional export markets in the Soviet Union. This paper is an attempt to quantify the magnitude of this...

By the end of 1991, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland had achieved a substantial degree of openness to foreign trade. In all three countries, trade is now demonopolized and licensing and quotas play a very small role. Exchange controls have virtually disappeared for current-account...

This paper studies the relationship between political conflict and economic growth in a simple model of endogenous growth with distributive conflicts. We study both the case of two `classes' (workers and capitalists) and the case of a continuum distribution of agents, characterized by their...

The nation-state system, democratic politics, and full economic integration are mutually incompatible. Of the three, at most two can be had together. The Bretton Woods/GATT regime was successful because its architects subjugated international economic integration to the needs and demands of...

The design of institutions is shaped by a fundamental trade-off. On the one hand, relationships and heterogeneity push governance down. On the other, the scale and scope benefits of market integration push governance up. A corner solution is rarely optimal. An intermediate outcome, a world...