The dual track approach to market liberalization has been widely recognized as the key to the success of the Chinese economic reform. In this paper we study the effectiveness of this strategy in economic environments where the status quo government control is incomplete. We show that in a...

We study, both theoretically and empirically, how export intensity (the ratio of exports to sales) is related to firm productivity. Using a representative sample of Italian manufacturing firms, we find that Total Factor Productivity (TFP) is strongly negatively correlated with export intensity...

This paper examines whether the export decision of firms is affected by their ownership structure, specifically it looks at whether family control is an obstacle to entering foreign markets. The underlying assumption is that family firms are risk averse. Risk aversion may be an obstacle to...

This paper examines the relationship between the exposure to foreign trade and productivity growth for a sample of Indian manufacturing firms. By testing a catching up model of productivity growth, it sheds some light on the nature of the relationship between the exposure to foreign competition...

This paper studies the relationship between bilateral trade patterns and opinions. It uses the Eurobarometer public opinion surveys published by the European Commission, which provide data on the share of the population in each EU member country in favor of each CEEC joining the EU. Our results...

This paper analyzes welfare-state determinants of individual attitudes towards immigrants - within and across countries - and their interaction with labor-market drivers of preferences. We consider two different mechanisms through which a redistributive welfare system might adjust as a result of...

This paper develops a theory of the endogenous formation of a common market in a three-country, two-factor political economy model. In the status quo, Home and Foreign implement non-discriminatory policies towards international factor flows, as to maximize the domestic median voter\'s welfare....

We review the micro-level evidence on the effects of trade and investment liberalization in the developing world. We focus, in particular, on the effects of the 1991 trade reform in India, since it provides an excellent controlled experiment in which the effects of a drastic trade regime change...

In recent years, Spain has received unprecedented immigration flows. Between 2001 and 2006 the fraction of the population born abroad more than doubled, increasing from 4.8% to 10.8%. For Spanish provinces with above-median inflows (relative to population), immigration increased the high school...

We study the effects of new imported inputs on the entry of new domestic products and their characteristics. To this purpose, we construct a novel, comprehensive and extremely detailed dataset, which contains product-level information on foreign trade and domestic production for 25 EU countries...