Health expenditure data almost always include extreme values, implying that the underlying distribution has heavy tails. This may result in infinite variances as well as higher-order moments and bias the commonly used least squares methods. To accommodate extreme values, we propose an estimation...

We explore how the competitive pressure of imports affects productivity, at the firm level. There are two conflicting effects of import-competition: the pro-competitive effect fosters productivity, while the direct effect hinders it. The pro-competitive effect dominates in the steady-state,...

This paper studies the importance of incentives as a determinant of international trade flows. We argue that barter, countertrade and foreign direct investment can be seen as efficient institutions that mitigate contractual hazards which arise in technology trade, marketing and imperfect capital...