This paper shows that trade policy can have significant intergenerational distributional effects across gender and social strata. We compare women and births in rural Indian districts more or less exposed to tariff cuts. For low socioeconomic status women, tariff cuts increase the likelihood of...

We measure the effects of trade liberalization over the period of 1993-2002 on regional poverty levels in 259 Indonesian regions, and investigate the labour market mechanisms behind these effects. The identification strategy relies on combining information on initial regional labour and product...

What are the factors that explain reversals in the implementation of structural reforms? Our main hypothesis is that reversals in different reforms are driven by different factors. This paper uses new reform indicators and presents novel evidence showing that (a) FDI inflows reduce the...

We use panel data on Mexican manufacturing plants to study the connection between plants’ responses to changes in the economic environment and their contributions to aggregate productivity growth in the period following the implementation of the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In all...

Trade liberalization is often met with sharp opposition. Recent examples include the so-called "Bolkestein" directive, which allows service providers from a given EU member to temporarily work in another member country. One way to view such a reform is that it simply widens the range of goods...

This paper investigates the role of structural reforms – privatization, financial reform and trade liberalization – as determinants of FDI inflows based on newly constructed dataset on structural reforms for 19 Latin American and 25 Eastern European countries between 1989 and 2004. Our main...

This paper studies gross worker flows to explain the rising informality in Brazilian metropolitan labor markets from 1983-2002. This period covers two economic cycles, several stabilization plans, a far-reaching trade liberalization, and changes in labor legislation through the Constitutional...

This paper assesses the empirical relationship between the liberalization of international trade and the economic status of women. Although historically globalization is not generally linked to the advancement of women, several recent country studies find export led growth in middle and low...