In this paper we highlight a new complementary channel to the business and social network effect à la Rauch (2001) through which immigrants generate increased export flows from the regions in which they settle to their countries of origin: they can become entrepreneurs. Using very small-scale...

In this paper we investigate the causal effect of immigration on trade flows, using Italian panel data covering very small geographical units (NUTS-3). Exploiting the very favorable setup offered by Italy's features - the very high number of countries of origin of immigrants ('super-diversity'),...

This paper provides new estimates of the effects of ethnic network on U.S. exports. In line with recent research, our dataset is a panel of exports from U.S. states to 29 foreign countries. Our analysis departs from the literature in two ways, both of which show that previous estimates of the...

Intangible knowledge capital (IKC) - technology produced by workers but not embodied in them - can offset the "middle income trap" as China exhausts the benefits of international technology transfer. IKC is productivity-enhancing among Chinese enterprises - more so in domestically owned than in...

The present paper argues that the effect of corruption on foreign ownership is not necessarily linear and depends on the level of host corruption. So long as the expected returns from foreign investments exceed its expected costs, higher host corruption will be associated with higher foreign...

Before the recent rebound due to the US-China trade war, tariffs on international trade were being progressively reduced over the last decades and advanced countries increasingly relied on non-tariff measures (NTMs) to protect their industries from foreign competition. In this paper, we exploit...

In this paper we investigate whether the effects of terrorism in one country spillover to affect trade in neighboring nations. Using a sample of more than 160 countries from 1976 to 2014, we report robust evidence that terrorist attacks in a nation's contiguous neighbors significantly reduce...

Trade unionism is a legislative system of organizing workers and raising voices for economic and social goods. As the process of global integration deepens the labour market become more flexible and fragmented, rendering collective organization more and more difficult. In this backdrop, the...

In this note we cast some doubt on the claim put forward by David Blanchflower (2007) that the probability of being unionized follows an inverted U-shaped pattern in age with a maximum in the mid- to late 40s. By using a special test for an inverted U-shaped pattern that has not been applied to...

This paper tests the pro-competitive effect of trade in the product and labor markets of UK manufacturing sectors between 1988 and 2003 using a two-stage estimation procedure. In the first stage, we use data on 9820 firms from twenty manufacturing sectors to simultaneously estimate mark-up and...