This paper documents an unusual and possibly significant phenomenon: the export of skills embodied in goods, services, or capital from poorer to richer countries. We first present a set of stylized facts. Using a measure that combines the sophistication of a country’s exports with the average...

This paper focuses on identifying preconditions that will ensure the sustainability of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). It argues that the macro, micro, and political conditions advanced in the literature to measure a country's ability to compete internationally, while necessary, are...

The paper prepares new estimates for the elasticity of US trade flows using bilateral, commodity-detailed trade data for 31 countries, using measures of expenditure and trade prices matched to commodity groups, and including a commodity-and-country specific proxy for global supply-cum-variety....

Historically, periods of high indebtedness have been associated with a rising incidence of default or restructuring of public and private debts. A subtle type of debt restructuring takes the form of "financial repression." Financial repression includes directed lending to government by captive...

This paper examines the exchange rate regimes of East Asian countries since the initial shift by China to a controlled appreciation in July 2005, testing econometrically the weights of key currencies in the implicit baskets that appear to be targeted by East Asian monetary authorities. It finds,...

This paper finds statistically robust and economically important effects of fiscal policy, external financial policy, net foreign assets, and oil prices on current account balances. The statistical model builds upon and improves previous explanations of current account balances in the academic...

Those who have watched financial crises in emerging economies over the past two years would have noticed two things. First, there has been a high concentration of financial crises in Latin America. Second, debt problems have been at the heart of several recent crises, including the prominent...

Recent research in international trade emphasizes the importance of firms' extensive margins for understanding overall patterns of trade as well as how firms respond to specific events such as trade liberalization. In this paper, we use detailed US trade statistics to provide a broad overview of...

The Doha Round is the longest-running trade liberalization negotiation in the postwar era. Despite its longevity, the end is not yet in sight as parties disagree on the depth of liberalization necessary in agriculture and nonagricultural market access (NAMA). This rift is prolonging the Round's...

This working paper draws on historical and contemporary data on tariffs, nontariff barriers, and transportation costs (for the United States and its major trading partners) to estimate the role of policy liberalization in US merchandise trade growth over the period 1980 to 2006. Both partial...