We exploit Japan's 19th century move from autarky to free trade to provide the first test of the general validity of the price formulation of the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem. In this formulation a country's autarky factor price vector imposes a single refutable prediction on the economy's factor...

We propose a normative assessment of the value of international trade that is rooted in production theory and embeds Ricardo's 1817 formulation of the gains from trade into a multi-factor general equilibrium framework. Without imposing strong assumptions on consumer rationality or data from the...

This paper challenges established claims of comparable degrees of market integration in Europe and China on the eve of industrialization. Our empirical strategy focuses on the dynamics of price convergence and accounts for general equilibrium effects arising from common shocks and network...

We exploit Japan’s 19th century move from autarky to free trade to provide the first test of the general validity of the price formulation of the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem. In this formulation a country’s autarky factor price vector imposes a single refutable prediction on the economy’s...

We propose a normative assessment of the value of international trade that is rooted in production theory and embeds Ricardo’s 1817 formulation of the gains from trade into a multi-factor general equilibrium framework. Without imposing strong assumptions on consumer rationality or data from...

Legal philosophers like Montesquieu, Hegel and Tocqueville have argued that lay participation in judicial decision-making would have benefits reaching far beyond the realm of the legal system narrowly understood. From an economic point of view, lay participation in judicial decision-making can...

Legal philosophers like Montesquieu, Hegel and Tocqueville have argued that lay participation in judicial decision-making would have benefits reaching far beyond the realm of the legal system narrowly understood. From an economic point of view, lay participation in judicial decision-making can...

Purchasing power adjusted incomes applied in cross-country comparisons are measured with bias. In this paper, we estimate the purchasing power parity (PPP) bias in Penn World Table incomes and provide corrected incomes. The bias is substantial and systematic: the poorer a country, the more its...

Since the late 1970s, the price indices underlying the poverty lines in India have been updated using aggregate indices. Widespread criticism of these indices led to the adoption of a new official methodology in 2011 based on unit values from consumption survey data. We propose an alternative...

In this paper we show that price equalization alone is not sufficient to determine the barriers to international trade. There are many barrier combinations that deliver price equalization, but each combination implies a different volume of trade. We demonstrate this first theoretically in a...