Several studies suggest that production of high-quality output is a precondition for firms in less developed countries to participate in the export market. Institutional deficiencies that raise the costs of entry into high-quality production therefore limit the positive impact that trade...

By comparing uncollateralized business loans made by a big tech lending program with conventional bank loans, we find that big tech loans tend to be smaller and have higher interest rates and that borrowers of big tech loans tend to repay far before maturity and borrow more frequently. These...

Although many developing countries have experienced growing income inequality and an increase in the relative demand for skilled workers during the 1980s, the sources of this trend remain a puzzle. This paper examines whether investment and adoption of skill-biased technology have contributed to...

We establish the following stylized facts: (1) Exports are characterized by Big Hits, (2) the Big Hits change from one period to the next, and (3) these changes are not explained by global factors like global commodity prices. These conclusions are robust to excluding extractable products (oil...

If trade barriers are managed by inefficient institutions, trade liberalization can lead to greater-than-expected gains. We examine Chinese textile and clothing exports before and after the elimination of externally imposed export quotas. We find that the surge in export value and decline in...

But the disappointments can also be attributed to the preferences because they discouraged additional value-addition in assembly and stimulated the use of expensive fabrics that were unlikely to be produced locally. When the MFA was removed, constrained countries such as China moved strongly...

This paper explores whether one of the most important U.S. policies towards Africa of the past few decades achieved its desired result. In 2000, the United States dropped trade restrictions on a broad list of products through the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Since the Act was...

We study e-commerce across 47 economies and 26 industries during the COVID-19 pandemic using aggregated and anonymized transaction-level data from Mastercard, scaled to represent total consumer spending. The share of online transactions in total consumption increased more in economies with...

In the world of omnichannel retail, some brands open a flagship store at online marketplaces, while others avert it. Focusing on a large e-commerce platform, we empirically study how flagship entry affects consumers, the platform, and various sellers on the platform

Using an administrative payroll dataset for 2.6 million retail workers, we find that the staggered rollout of a major e-commerce firm's fulfillment centers reduces traditional retail workers' income in geographically proximate counties by 2.4%. Wages of hourly workers, especially part-time...