"This paper reviews the recent theoretical literature on heterogeneous firms and trade, which emphasizes firm selection into international markets and reallocations of resources across firms. We discuss the empirical challenges that motivated this research and its relationship to traditional...

A central argument for trade liberalization is that when the "gains from trade" are shared, countries see large gains in economic development. In this paper, I empirically evaluate this argument and assess the impact of elite capture on regional development. Africa provides a unique study ground...