This paper quantifies the effect of the government-controlled appreciation of the Chinese renminbi (RMB) vis-à-vis the USD from 2005 to 2008 on the prices charged by US producers. As the RMB during that time was pegged to a basket of currencies, the empirical strategy must account for the fact...

This paper starts by documenting that during the last decades, the human capital embodied in imports from skill abundant nations has noticeably reduced skill accumulation in the less developed world. To identify the causal relation between these variables, the analysis utilizes over-time...

This paper builds up an extension to the Mussa and Rosen (1978) model of quality pricing under perfect competition. Our model incorporates decreasing returns to scale. First, we predict that exchange rate shocks are imperfectly passed through into prices. Second, prices of low quality goods are...

This paper builds up an extension to the Mussa and Rosen (1978) model of quality pricing under perfect competition. Our model incorporates decreasing returns to scale. First, we predict that exchange rate shocks are imperfectly passed through into prices. Second, prices of low quality goods are...

This paper starts by documenting that during the last decades, the human capital embodied in imports from skill abundant nations has noticeably reduced skill accumulation in the less developed world. To identify the causal relation between these variables, the analysis utilizes over-time...

What is the impact of import competition from low-wage countries (LWCs) on inflationary pressure in Europe? This paper examines whether labor-intensive exports from emerging Europe, Asia, and other global regions have a uniform impact on producer prices in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, and the...

Merchanting is goods trade that does not cross the border of the firm's country of residence. Merchanting grew strongly in the last decade in several small open economies, particularly in Finland, Ireland, Sweden, and Switzerland, and has become an important driver of these countries' current...

An increasing number of oil market experts argue that OPEC members substantially overstate their oil reserves. While the economic implications could be dire, the incentives for overreporting remain unclear. This paper analyzes these incentives, showing that oil exporters may overreport to raise...

Male and female labor are imperfect substitutes and some sectors are more suitable for female employment than others. Clearly, expansions of those sectors that use female labor intensively must affect aggregate female labor force participation (FLFP). We suggest that FLFP actually drops when...

Recent trade data exhibit the following four empirical regularities: (i) countries import only a small fraction of all traded varieties (ii) per capita income and the number of imported varieties correlate positively (iii) per capita income and trade shares correlate positively and, finally,...