Weak enforcement of international contracts can substantially reduce international trade. We develop a model where agents build reputations to overcome the difficulties that this institutional failure causes in a context of incomplete information. The model describes the interplay between...

Firms need to incur substantial sunk costs to break in foreign markets, yet many give up exporting shortly after their first experience, which typically involves very small sales. Conversely, other new exporters shoot up their foreign sales and expand to new destinations. We investigate a simple...

This paper uses a natural experiment to assess whether temporary protection from trade with industrial leaders can foster development of infant industries in follower countries. Using a new dataset compiled from primary sources, I find that in the short-run regions (départements) in the French...

This paper uses the natural experiment of Argentina’s integration into world markets in the late-nineteenth century to provide evidence on the role of internal geography in shaping the effects of external integration. We develop a quantitative model of the distribution of economic activity...

How does a major financial network innovation influence firm performance? Despite muchspeculation we have little hard quantitative evidence about the impact of technology diffusionin financial services. In this paper we use the entire adoption history for SWIFT (the Societyfor Worldwide...

Can the increasing significance of knowledge-products in national income - the growing weightless economy - influence economic development? Those technologies reduce ''distance'' between consumers and knowledge production. This paper analyzes a model embodying such a reduction. The model shows...

The paper explores the determinants of industry location across interwar Poland. After more than 120 years of political and economic separation, Poland was reunified at the end of 1918. In consequence, its industry faced massive structural changes: the removal of internal tariff barriers and...

We provide an analysis of the 2008-2009 trade collapse using microdata from a small open economy,Belgium. First, we find that changes in firm-country-product exports and imports occurred mostly atthe intensive margin: the number of firms, the average number of destination and origin markets...

This paper reviews the new approach to international trade based on firm heterogeneity in differentiated product markets. This approach explains a variety of features exhibited in disaggregated trade data, including the higher productivity of exporters relative to non-exporters, within-industry...