Although economists have long been aware of Jensen's inequality, many econometric applications have neglected an important implication of it: the standard practice of interpreting the parameters of log-linearized models estimated by ordinary least squares as elasticities can be highly misleading...

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

We draw attention to the role of economic geography in explaining important cross-sectional facts which are difficult to account for in existing models of industrialization. By construction, closed-economy models that stress the role of local demand in generating sufficient expenditure on...

This paper extends a recent class of quantitative models of international trade to incorporate factor mobility within countries. We present a model-based decomposition of the variance of economic activity into the contributions of locational fundamentals, market access and their covariance. We...

The theoretical result that there are welfare gains from trade is a central tenet of international economics. In a class of trade models that satisfy a "gravity equation," the welfare gains from trade can be computed using only the open economy domestic trade share and the elasticity of trade...

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...

This paper reviews the empirical evidence on firm heterogeneity in international trade. A first wave of empirical findings from micro data on plants and firms proposed challenges for existing models of inter- national trade and inspired the development of new theories emphasizing firm...

We study the role of contract enforcement in shaping the dynamics of international trade at the firm level. We develop a theoretical model to describe how agents build reputations to overcome the problems created by weak enforcement of international contracts. We find that, all else equal,...