This paper uses unique Finnish firm-level micro data on service imports, work-force composition, and firm characteristics to examine changes in employment composition and performance of Finnish service importers during a period of a significant increase in services imports (2002-2012). We use...

Service inputs are a key component of the costs of exporting, and contribute to explain the process of internationalization of firms. A new dataset on the participation of French firms in global value chains reveals that firms with longer export experience in a market are more likely to source...

This paper analyzes the dynamics of trade policy reform under democracy. In an overlapping generations model, heterogeneous agents may acquire skills when young, thereby determining the skill composition of their cohort. Current and anticipated trade policies influence education decisions, and...

We investigate theoretically and empirically the role of wholesalers in mediating the productivity effects of trade liberalization. Intermediaries provide indirect access to foreign produced inputs. The productivity effects of input tariff cuts on firms that do not directly import therefore...

This paper revisits the relationship between international trade and economic growth. We measure trade openness indices separately with respect to intermediate inputs and final goods and find that it is the former which turns out to be significant in explaining growth gains from trade. Using...

This paper analyses the role played by vertical linkages on the effects of trade liberalization on technology adoption and their consequences on average productivity and welfare in a trade model with heterogeneous firms. We find that the strength of vertical linkages shapes the effects that...

This paper studies the interplay between the wage gap and government spending in a small open economy facing a shock in trade policy. We consider a specific factor model with an export sector, which uses skilled labour, and an import-competing sector, which uses unskilled labour. We find the...

Does trade openness systematically imply bigger governments, as proposed by Rodrik (1998)? This paper presents a novel and more refined explanation for when and why international trade may enlarge the public sector. We propose that trade openness is associated with bigger governments if (i) the...

In a three-country model of endogenous trade agreements, we study the implications of the Most Favored Nation Clause (MFN) when countries are free to form discriminatory preferential trade agreements (PTAs). While PTA members discriminate against non-member countries, MFN requires non-members to...

We extend structural gravity models of bilateral trade flows to oligopolistic competition. We show that conventional gravity estimates do not only reflect trade costs but also market power. Our simple estimation procedure generalizes the standard gravity model and disentangles exogenous trade...