International trade patterns at the product level are surprisingly dynamic. The majority of trade relationships exist for just a few, often only one to three, years. In this paper, I examine empirically the duration in German import trade at the 8-digit product level from 1995 to 2005. I find...

This paper explores official trade data to identify patterns of smuggling in international trade. Our main measure of interest is the difference in matched partner trade statistics, i.e., the extent to which the recorded export value in the source country deviates from the reportedimport value...

After World War II, town twinning became popular, notably in Germany. This was mainly a reaction to the war experience, and it was aimed at creating renewed international understanding and co-operation between German cities and cities in other countries. The contacts created by town twinning...

We document key features of the deepening economic relationship between Brazil and China. This is evident from sharply increased bilateral trade and foreign direct investment flows and also from enhanced cohesion of negotiating positions in international fora. Data presented show bilateral trade...

This paper investigates the role of firm productivity in drawing firm boundaries in global sourcing. Our analysis focuses on how productivity affects the allocation of ownership rights between the headquarter of a firm and an intermediate input supplier (vertical integration vs. outsourcing), as...

We propose a joint dating of the Italian business and credit cycle on a historical horizon, by applying a local turning-point dating algorithm to the level of the variables. Along with short cycles, corresponding to traditional business cycle fluctuations, we also investigate medium cycles,...

The paper studies wage and employment determination in the Swedish business sector from the mid-1910s to the late 1930s. This period includes the boom and bust cycle of the early 1920s as well as the Great Depression of the early 1930s. The events of the early 1920s are particularly intriguing,...

The recent fears of a sovereign debt crisis have spurred interest in the sustainability of public debt. There are two different approaches to the assessment of sustainability: the use of sustainability gap indicators (Blanchard et al., 1990) and the time series approach (Trehan and Walsh, 1988)....

This paper reconsiders the role of monetary policy in Sweden’s strong recovery from the Great Depression. The Riksbank in the 1930s is sometimes seen as an example of a central bank that was relatively innovative in terms of the conduct of monetary policy. To consider this analytically, we...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the sustainability of public debt in Italy during the last 150 years (1861-2010) by employing a database containing several statistical novelties: new time series estimates of public debt and GDP (respectively Bank of Italy and Baffigi, 2011) and an original...