Many countries spend significant resources on investment promotion agencies (IPAs) in the hope of attracting inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI). Despite the importance of this question for public policy choices, little is known about the effectiveness of investment promotion efforts....

The debate on trade and growth increasingly focuses on the composition of exports. Exports of more "sophisticated" products appear to be positively correlated with growth, and upgrading the quality of exports is high on the policy agenda of many countries. This study presents evidence suggesting...

Foreign exchange windfalls such as those from natural resource revenues change non-resource exports, imports, and the capital account. We study the balance between these responses and, using data on 41 resource exporters for 1970-2006, show that the response to a dollar of resource revenue is,...

While the impact of globalization on income inequality has received a lot of attention,little is known about its effect on the gender wage gap (GWG). This study argues that there is a systematic difference in the GWG between exporting firms and non-exporters. By the virtue of being exposed to...

Conventional explanations for the post-1991 growth of India’s manufacturing sector focus on goods trade liberalization and industrial de-licensing. We demonstrate the powerful contribution of a neglected factor: India’s policy reforms in services. The link between these reforms and the...

This paper examines the effect of Wal-Mart's entry into Mexico on Mexican manufacturers of consumer goods. Guided by firm interviews that suggested substantial heterogeneity across firms in how they responded to Wal-Mart's entry, we develop a dynamic industry model in which firms decide whether...

This study documents some unintended consequences of the WTO membership by providing evidence on displacement of tariff evasion driven by the WTO accession process. We argue that implementation of Article VII of the GATT resulted in limiting discretion of customs officials in terms of assessing...

This study examines developments at the plant-product level preceding an expansion into foreign markets. It relies on very detailed Mexican data for 1994-2004, a period of liberalization in US trade policy vis a vis Mexico, mandated by the North American Free Trade Agreement. Our approach is...

This study uses a unique dataset to provide the first comprehensive test of the theory of export financing. We extend the existing literature by drawing attention to the theoretical and empirical relationship between the extent of competition in the export market and the choice of financing...

We develop a new model of multi-product firms which invest to improve both the quality of their individual products and of their brand. Because of flexible manufacturing, products closer to firms' core competence have lower costs, so they produce more of them, and also have higher incentives to...