We study, both theoretically and empirically, how export intensity (the ratio of exports to sales) is related to firm productivity. Using a representative sample of Italian manufacturing firms, we find that Total Factor Productivity (TFP) is strongly negatively correlated with export intensity...

We argue that, in the presence of asymmetric countries, a trade agreement that conforms to GATT’s reciprocity rule allows the (stronger) less trade dependent country to improve its welfare relative to both the free trade and the trade war. Conversely, the (weaker) more trade dependent country...

We review the micro-level evidence on the effects of trade and investment liberalization in the developing world. We focus, in particular, on the effects of the 1991 trade reform in India, since it provides an excellent controlled experiment in which the effects of a drastic trade regime change...

We study the effect of trade integration on the regional coevolution of income, migrations, and unemployment in a dynamic coreperiphery model with limited labor mobility and frictions in the job matching process. Our model can help explain a recently documented empirical puzzle, i.e., the...

The cultural and geographic proximity between two regions otherwise very distant (both in terms of factor endowment and of specialization pattern) makes the wage perceived as fair in the peripheral region dependent on the wage prevailing in the core region. As a consequence, the peripheral wage...

We study the effects of new imported inputs on the entry of new domestic products and their characteristics. To this purpose, we construct a novel, comprehensive and extremely detailed dataset, which contains product-level information on foreign trade and domestic production for 25 EU countries...

This paper studies the effect of imported inputs on relative skilled labor demand. To this purpose, it uses firm-level data for 27 transition countries and propensity score matching techniques. The results show that importing inputs induces skill upgrading: according to a conservative estimate,...

During the 1990s Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have experienced rapid increases in wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers and received the largest FDI inflow in Central and Eastern Europe. This paper analyzes whether FDI has contributed to the raise in earning inequality...

This paper studies the e¤ects of service o¤shoring on the level and skill composition of domestic employment, using a rich data set of Italian …rms and propensity score matching techniques. The results show that service o¤shoring has no e¤ect on the level of employment but changes its...