This paper provides a reinterpretation of seventeenth-century mercantilist trade doctrine and policy in light of recent theories of strategic trade policy. Mercantilist economic thought, like strategic export-promotion theories, emphasized the use of government policy to capture rents that arise...

Interest in income and price elasticities for international trade has increased recently because of the debt crisis that many developing countries are experiencing. Estimates of income elasticities of import demand, however, range from a low of 1.3 to a high of 4.7. Such differences have...

In 2009, the Federal Reserve Board implemented a survey of families that participated in the 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to gain detailed information on the effects of the recent recession on all types of households. Using data from the 2007-09 SCF panel, we highlight the variation in...

The degree of exchange-rate pass-through to import prices is low. An average pass-through estimate for the 1980s would be roughly 50 percent for the United States implying that, following a 10 percent depreciation of the dollar, a foreign exporter selling to the U.S. market would raise its price...

This paper studies the effects of a path change in government debt composition and aggregate transfers on allocations and prices. It is shown that the effects are zero under some agent-specific transfer scheme even when markets are incomplete. If markets are complete, then the effects are zero...

American women tend to be less financially literate than men, which is consistent with a household division of labor in which men manage finances. However, women also tend to outlive their husbands, so they will eventually need to take over this task. Using a new survey of older couples, I find...