We investigate the regulation of labor markets through employment laws, collective bargaining laws, and social security laws in 85 countries. We find that richer countries regulate labor less than poorer countries do, although they have more generous social security systems. The political power...

This paper generalizes the gross exports accounting framework, initially proposed by Koopman, Wang, and Wei (2014) for a country's aggregate exports, to one at the sector, bilateral, and bilateral-sector levels. Such a generalization requires a conceptual distinction between value added exports...

The paper studies the effect of the market's perceived exchange rate volatility on bid-ask spreads. The anticipated volatility is extracted from currency options data. An increase in the perceived volatility is found to widen bid-ask spreads. The direction of the effect is consistent with an...

This paper analyzes Krugman's contention that there is a quot;gold standard paradoxquot; in the speculative attack literature. The paradox occurs if a country's currency appreciates after it runs out of gold or equivalently if a speculative attack can happen only after the country...

This paper surveys research on corporate governance, with special attention to the importance of legal protection of investors and of ownership concentration in corporate governance systems around the world

The real effective exchange rate (REER) is one of the most cited statistical constructs in open-economy macroeconomics. We show that the models used to compute these numbers are not rich enough to allow for the rising importance of global value chains. Moreover, because different sectors within...

It is well known that the balance sheets of most major central banks significantly expanded in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007-2011, but the consequences of this expansion are not well understood. This book develops a unified framework to explain how and why central bank balance...

This paper offers a new interpretation of the connection between openness and good governance. Assuming that corruption and bad governance drive out international trade and investment more than domestic trade and investment, a naturally more open economy' as determined by its size and geography...

We examine the relationship between urban characteristics in 1960 and urban growth (income and population) between 1960 and 1990. Our major findings are that income and population growth move together and both types of growth are (1) positively related to initial schooling, (2) negatively...