Endorsements are a simple language for communication between interest group leaders and group members. The members, who share policy concerns, may not perfectly understand where their interests lie on certain issues. If their leaders cannot fully explain the issues, they can convey some...

We develop a model in which connections between individuals serve as social collateral to enforce informal insurance payments. We show that: (i) The degree of insurance is governed by the expansiveness of the network, measured with the per capita number of connections that groups have with the...

We propose a theory of the global production process that focuses on tradeable tasks, and use it to study how falling costs of offshoring affect factor prices in the source country. We identify a productivity effect of task trade that benefits the factor whose tasks are more easily moved...

We study the incentives that governments have to protect intellectual property in a trading world economy. We consider a world economy with ongoing innovation in two countries that differ in market size and in their capacity for innovation. After describing the determination of national patent...

We develop a competitive model of trade between countries with similar aggregate factor endowments. The trade pattern reflects differences in the distribution of talent across the labor forces of the two countries. The country with a relatively homogeneous population exports the good produced by...

Recent attempts to resolve the international debt crisis have lead some countries to engage in debt-equity swaps. This paper explores conditions under which such transactions are beneficial to the debtor, as well as the creditors. It identifies a market failure that may prevent the emergence of...