We develop a procedure to rank-order countries and commodities using dis-aggregated American imports data. We find strong evidence that both countries and commodities can be ranked, consistent with the product cycle' hypothesis. Countries habitually begin to export goods to the United States...

The relationship between history and economics as academic disciplines is methodologically subtle and sociologically contested. If the Cliometric revolution can be characterized as an acquisition of economics by history, the most recent trends in Historical Economics appear to turn this...

The paper considers the problem of choosing a multilateral system of index numbers in order to make aggregate price and quantity comparisons between many countries and regions. The problems involved in choosing functional forms in order to make these comparisons are both theoretically and...

This paper characterizes the frequency domain properties of feedback control rules in linear systems in order to better understand how different policies affect outcomes frequency by frequency. We are especially concerned in understanding how reductions of variance at some frequencies induce...

The debate between quot;structuralquot; and quot;reduced-formquot; approaches has generated substantial controversy in applied economics. This article reviews a recent literature in public economics that combines the advantages of reduced-form strategies -- transparent and credible...

Most empirical policy work requires the aggregation of policies. Trade policy aggregation exemplifies the aggregation problem poignantly, with thousands of highly dispersed trade barriers. This paper provides methods of policy aggregation that are consistent with two common objectives of...