This paper analyses and quantifies the effects of trade liberalisation and skill-biased technical change, both exogenous and trade-induced, on the skill premium and real wages of unskilled and skilled workers in the Mexican manufacturing sector, using industry- and firm-level data for 1984-1990...

This paper analyses the effects of trade liberalisation and technical change on real and relative wages.  It builds a model with monopolistic competition, heterogeneous firms and two countries, North and South, and solves it numerically.  Skill-biased technical change, caused by decreases in...

The current paper demonstrates a dochotomy of the growth response to changes in the barter terms of trade (TOT), employing as case studies the following two African countries: Botswana and Nigeria.  Using distributed-lag analysis, the paper finds that the effect of TOT on output is positive and...

Why do so many African governments consistently impose high tax rates and make little investment in productive public goods when alternative policies could yield greater tax revenues and higher national income? We posit and test an intertemporal political economy model in which the government...

Do openness to trade and higher levels of human capital promote faster productivity growth? That they do is a key implication of several versions of endogenous growth theory. To answer the question we use panel data on 93 countries spanning the 1970-2000 period. Controlling for fixed effects as...

Do openness to trade and higher levels of human capital growth promote faster growth? To answer that question we use a panel of countries to investigate the role of human capital and two measures of openness in determining both the level of income and its growth rate. We argue that focusing on...

This paper studies the distributional impact of commodity price shocks over both the short and very long run.  Using a GARCH model, we find that Australia experienced more volatility than many commodity exporting developing countries over the periods 1865-1940 and 1960-2007.  A single equation...

A windfall of natural resource revenue (or foreign aid) faces government with choices of how to manage public debt, investment, and the distribution of funds for consumption, particularly if the windfall is both anticipated and temporary.  Standard policy advice follows the permanent income...

Abstract. This paper studies the distributional impact of commodity price shocks over the both the short and very long run. Using a GARCH model, we find that Australia experienced more volatility than many commodity exporting developing countries over the periods 1865- 1940 and 1960-2007. A...

Many previous studies of the role of trade during the British Industrial Revolution have found little or no role for trade in explaining British living standards or growth rates.  We construct a three-region model of the world in which Britain trades with North America and the rest of the...