In this paper, we provide aggregate trends in China’s trade performance from the 1840s to the present. Based on historical benchmarks, we argue that China’s recent gains are not exclusively due to the reforms since 1978. Rather, foreign economic activity can be understood by developments...

How much of China’s recent economic performance can be attributed to market-oriented reforms introduced in the last two decades? A long-run perspective may be important for understanding the process of economic development occurring today. This Paper compares the integration of rice markets in...

Convergence in per capita income across countries turns on whether technological knowledge spillovers are global or local in a large class of models. This Paper estimates the amount of spillovers from R&D expenditures in major industrialized countries on a geographic basis. A new data set is...

Convergence in per capita income turns on whether technological knowledge spillovers are global or local. Global spillovers favour convergence, while a geographically limited scope of knowledge diffusion can lead to regional clusters of countries with persistently different levels of income per...

Current orthodoxy suggests that the Industrial Revolution began in Europe because European institutions promoted comparatively high levels of market efficiency. This Paper compares the actual efficiency of markets in Europe and China, two regions of the world that were relatively advanced in the...

I discuss the concept and empirical importance of international technology diffusion from the point of view of recent work on endogenous technological change. In this literature, technology is viewed as technological knowledge. I first review major concepts and discuss the relation of...

Geography shapes economic outcomes in a major way. This Paper uses spatial empirical methods to detect and analyse trade patterns in a historical dataset on Chinese rice prices. Our results suggest that spatial features were important for the expansion of interregional trade. Geography dictates,...

We estimate international technology spillovers to US manufacturing firms via imports and foreign direct investment (FDI) between the years 1987-96. In contrast to earlier work, our results suggest that FDI leads to significant productivity gains for domestic firms. The size of FDI spillovers is...

This paper studies international joint ventures, where foreign direct investment is performed by a foreign and a domestic firm that together set up a new firm, the joint venture. Employing administrative data on all international joint ventures in China from 1998 to 2007 - roughly a quarter of...

This paper identifies globalization as a factor behind the rapid increase in executive compensation and inequality over the last few decades. Employing comprehensive data on top executives at major U.S. companies, we show that compensation is higher at more global firms. We find that pay...